Blacklisted in America, director Joseph Losey moved to the UK, where he did some of his best work.
In Time Without Pity, sensitive undergraduate Alec Graham (Alec McCowen) is sentenced to hang for the murder of his girlfriend, Jennie Cole (Christina Lubicz), at the home of his best friend, Brian Stanford (Paul Daneman) and his family.
He didn’t do it (we see the identity of the real murderer from the offset) but was too drunk at the time to recall the events of the night or offer any meaningful evidence in his own defence.
Alec’s father, author David Graham (Michael Redgrave) – a severe alcoholic who has just spent two years in rehab in a Canadian sanitarium and has neglected his son in the past – flies in to London the day before the planned execution to visit his son on death row.
However, Alec is resigned to his fate and does not respond well to his father’s attempts at a final reconciliation.
Convinced of his son’s innocence, David mounts a last-ditch effort to find the real murderer in the twenty-four hours remaining until the planned execution – all the time battling his inner demons and the urge to return to the whisky bottle.
His investigations lead him to Brian Stanford’s father, Robert Stanford (Leo McKern) – a foul-mouthed, ill-tempered millionaire sports car manufacturer who terrorises his young wife Honor (Ann Todd) and adopted son – and to Vickie Harker (Lois Maxwell), a brazen young secretary at Stanford’s factory who received a promotion following Alec’s conviction.
David ultimately tricks the killer into confessing, but his ruse leads to his own death.
Peter Cushing appears as the sniffy lawyer, Clayton, who gradually becomes convinced that David Graham knows what he’s talking about, and watch for Dirk Bogarde in an uncredited cameo as a court reporter.
David Graham
Michael Redgrave Honor Stanford
Ann Todd Robert Stanford
Leo McKern Brian Stanford
Paul Daneman Jeremy Clayton
Peter Cushing Alec Graham
Alec McCowen Mrs Harker
Renee Houston Vickie Harker
Lois Maxwell Maxwell
Richard Wordsworth Barnes
George Devine Agnes Cole
Joan Plowright Home Office Under-Secretary
Ernest Clark Prison Chaplain
Peter Copley Prison Governor
Hugh Moxey Comedian
Dickie Henderson Stanford’s Housekeeper
Gwynne Whitby Jennie Cole
Christina Lubicz
Director
Joseph Losey
Video
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He didn’t do it (we see the identity of the real murderer from the offset) but was too drunk at the time to recall the events of the night or offer any meaningful evidence in his own defence.
His investigations lead him to Brian Stanford’s father, Robert Stanford (Leo McKern) – a foul-mouthed, ill-tempered millionaire sports car manufacturer who terrorises his young wife Honor (Ann Todd) and adopted son – and to Vickie Harker (Lois Maxwell), a brazen young secretary at Stanford’s factory who received a promotion following Alec’s conviction.
