Britannia Mews – 1949 | 90 mins | Drama | B&W

Plot Synopsis

A romantic drama from Twentieth Century-Fox with requisite dependable Stateside actors Dana Andrews and Maureen O’Hara heading the cast to boost overseas marketing. This compulsive adaptation of Margery Sharp’s excellent but grim study of Victorian class relationships is striking and original, but undermined by the peculiar casting of Andrews in a dual role as two husbands. The real star of this odd film is Dame Sybil Thorndike, giving an impeccable performance as a wretched blackmailing old hag.

Middle-class Victorian young lady Adelaide Culver (Dana Andrews) has always been fascinated by the adjacent working-class slum Britannia Mews, and when she falls in love with her impoverished art teacher, Henry Lambert (Dana Andrews), they move into the Mews together when her parents refuse to consent to their marriage. Unfortunately, Addie never heeded her new husband’s warning that he ‘drinks like a fish’, and late realises she has married a ne’er-do-well adulterous alcoholic who never loved her. When the inebriated Henry returns home one day, he drunkenly falls down the steps to an accidental death. An old hag from across the street, Mrs. Mounsey (Sybil Thorndike), steps forward as a witness for the police, but then begins to blackmail Addie for ten shillings per week.

Addie becomes hardened to her new environment and loses much of her former poise and dignity; that is until she meets a man who looks identical to her deceased husband, former barrister Gilbert Lauderdale. Lauderdale deals with the blackmailing Mounsey and quickly moves in as Addie’s lodger.Together they unearth Henry’s beloved puppets, and with the assistance of puppeteer Mr. Bly (A.E. Matthews), open a popular marionette theatre.