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Gripping Ealing fantasy-thriller starring Michael Redgrave as an Air Marshal who finds the terrifying events predicted in a dream about his flight to Japan are beginning to come true and his aircraft is heading towards disaster.





December 20, 1955

Screen: Airborne Drama; The Night My Number Came Up' at Sutton

By BOSLEY CROWTHER

Published: December 20, 1955

THE experience of being aloft in an airplane lost in a storm and running low on fuel, and with all the circumstances ominously matching a dream of disaster that someone has had, is rather effectively recorded in "The Night My Number Came Up." This good, lively British melodrama arrived at the Sutton yesterday.



Although it is based on an experience Air Marshal Sir Victor Goddard had (and recounted in a quite dramatic fashion a few years ago in an American magazine), this picture has all the characteristics of a studied exercise in suspense, especially in its playing upon the terror stimulated by that premonitive dream. There is the assortment of "types" in the airplane, the preliminary brush with disaster on a first leg and then all the touch-and-go build-up of personal drama as the plane is truly lost in the final storm.



Since this sort of screen entertainment isn't likely to conclude in a fatal crash—which is to say that you're safe in assuming that it is going to come out all right—it lacks the supreme excitement of complete uncertainty. But there is enough shock and ticklish detail in it to set the average attendant's nerves on edge. A professional or seasoned airplane traveler may question the credibility of some of the flight procedures and the navigation. However, we aren't all birds.



Michael Redgrave is sensitive and courageous as the air marshal who is the subject of the dream, yet goes ahead and exposes himself to danger because he won't let superstition get the best of him. Alexander Knox turns in a taut performance as an old British civil service hand whose long experience in the Orient has caused him to credit the supernatural—and be afraid. Denholm Elliott as the aide to the air marshal, Nigel Stock as the pilot of the plane and George Rose as a crude commercial traveler are good in supporting roles.



R. C. Sherriff's script is thoroughly functional and Leslie Norman's direction is tight and sound. The production is a bit on the shy side, but this is not a colossal tale. It is an hour and a half of sweating through a black-and-white ordeal in the clouds.





THE NIGHT MY NUMBER CAME UP, screen play by R. C. Sherriff, based on The Saturday Evening Post article by Air Marshal Sir Victor Goddard; directed by Leslie Norman at Ealing Studios, London; a Michael Balcon Production presented by the J. Arthur Rank Organization; released by the Continental Distributing Corporation. At the Sutton.

Air Marshal Hardie . . . . . Michael Redgrave

Mary Campbell . . . . . Sheila Sim

Owen Robertson . . . . . Alexander Knox

Flight Lieut. McKenzie . . . . . Denholm Elliott

Mrs. Robertson . . . . . Ursula Jeans

Wainright . . . . . Ralph Truman

Lindsay . . . . . Michael Hordern

The Pilot . . . . . Nigel Stock

The Soldiers . . . . . Bill Kerr, Alfie Bass

Bennett . . . . . George Rose

The Engineer . . . . . Victor Maddern

The Co-Pilot . . . . . David Orr

The Navigator . . . . . David Yates

The Wing Commander . . . . . Hugh Moxey