If Winter Comes (1947)

In a pre-WWII small English village, a writer (Walter Pidgeon) stuck in an unhappy marriage to a cold unloving wife (Angela Lansbury) becomes embroiled in a scandal when he befriends a young unwed and pregnant girl (Janet Leigh) and takes her into his home. Suspicion falls on him as the father when, in fact, he's in love with a married woman (Deborah Kerr). A tragedy brings the nastiness of the small town mentality to the forefront. It's a sort of PEYTON PLACE or KINGS ROW set in a small English village. Based on the novel by A.S.M. Hutchinson (previously made as a 1923 silent) and directed by Victor Saville (GREEN DOLPHIN STREET), the film never takes flight despite its juicy melodramatic aspects. It takes the high minded approach rather than a lurid one which might have given the film the necessary punch. It doesn't help that Pidgeon is an uninteresting actor who's completely miscast. Oh, he's fine as Mr. Greer Garson but it's difficult to see him as the kind of man who's a chick magnet and his character seems terribly naive in some respects. Poor Angela Lansbury only two years older than Janet Leigh's unwed teen mother and already playing spiteful middle aged wives. With Binnie Barnes as the village gossip, Dame May Whitty, Rhys Williams and Reginald Owen.