Normally, I actively seek out and watch film noir movies whenever they come to my attention because most of them are enjoyable. Some though, such as Cloudburst, are merely ok. It's not as impressive or exciting to watch as something like Cause For Alarm with Loretta Young, but I decided to see it anyway because it is an obscure film made in britain. This is one of those movies that I had to discuss almost immediately after watching it, because there's not a lot of information about it online due to its obscurity. This makes recalling details in the film difficult because the only way to remember everything is to have watched it recently. After experiencing this film, I can conclude that it's not really that great, but it does have a plot point that interests me because it involves world war 2. The story centers around a man named John (Robert Preston), a former codebreaker for the british military during the war. In real life, the nazis were fond of using something called an enigma machine. Basically a kind of typewriter with a set of rotors on top, the machine encrypted every single character with a special symbol, and the encoded messages could only be deciphered by another engima machine with the same rotor settings. This basically meant that with every single key press, a letter can show up as 1 out of over 20 million possible combinations. Due to this, it wasn't surprising that the germans throughout the war were convinced that the enigma machine was undecipherable. This is where our main character comes in. During the war against Hitler, he was involved with trying to crack these german radio messages in order to provide the british (and allied forces overall) with more accurate intelligence. In wartime, information is power, and the more you have of it, the better. After the war, John is out walking with his wife Carol one day when a car comes down the rural, unpaved road they're walking on and hits Carol. John explodes at the driver of the vehicle, insisting he did this on purpose and there is no possible way it was an accident. The man in the car's wife stabs John's hand with scissors and they drive away. Later, John uses his skills as a former intelligence officer to discover the identity of his wife's attacker and tracks him to a secluded area. He tortures the man (who's named Mick) and eventually runs him over in a car on a rural road. John now feels he has had his revenge, but only partially, since the guy's wife is still alive. Unfortunately, his plan backfires because now John is himself a wanted man for killing the driver of that car. Eventually, Scotland Yard gets involved and tries to track down who they think is responsible for killing Mick, although they're not initially aware that John himself did it. Ironically, John lies to the very faces of people he works with about who did the killing, and the men have no idea that the murderer is right in front of them. Scotland Yard is however aware that whoever killed Mick used a secret code word which when deciphered, will reveal the identity of the killer. John later confronts the same woman who stabbed him with the scissors that day when his wife was killed, and runs her over in his car. Having nothing to lose by this point, John goes back to where all the codebreakers are, who have been trying all day to find out the secret word but haven't been able to do so. John decides to turn himself in and reveals that the secret word is Carol, the name of his dead wife. After having a final drink, John is arrested and taken away by the cops. I have to say, even though I didn't think this movie was that incredible, it certainly had one of the most english endings I've ever seen. An american film noir would probably have the "protagonist" go out guns blazing and kill as many cops as possible before going down, but John goes willingly. Robert Preston delivers a good performance in this movie, but my main gripe with the film is how bland the dialogue sequences seem. I don't know what it is, it just seems like if dialogue scenes aren't handled competently, I fidget through them because I get impatient at the lack of new scenery. It seems like each time two people in the film are talking, the camera angle never changes. They just use one camera every single scene, and the viewpoint remains static. Understandably, this can get pretty tiring. Aside from those segments, I thought the rest of the movie was pretty good, especially the parts where John tortures Mick and runs over him and later his wife. Elizabeth Sellars does a good job as well, even if she doesn't appear that much before she's killed. She was involved in world war 2 just like her husband, and was tortured by the Gestapo (nazi secret police), sustaining a permanent leg injury. It's also worth noting that this film was made by Hammer Studios, which is mostly remembered today for their numerous horror movies.