Cottage to Let – 1941 | 97 mins | Thriller | B&W

Plot Synopsis

Cottage to Let is one of four films made by Anthony Asquith at Gainsborough Pictures during the Second World War. Most of the film was shot in the studio yet despite the strong cast it isn’t one of Asquith’s best films.

The story is set during the war, an inventor named Barington (Leslie Banks) is engaged to work on a new and secret bombsight on his estate in Scotland. A cottage in his grounds is commandeered as a military hospital, and the first patient there is Perry (John Mills), a wounded RAF pilot. Barington’s assistant, Trentley (Michael Wilding), is suspected of being a German agent, and Evans, a detective, poses as a butler to watch him. Dimble (Alastair Sim), a spy suspect, claims to have rented the cottage, but he is in reality a British agent. Subsequently it is revealed that the plausible Perry is not an RAF pilot but a Nazi agent after the plans of the bombsight. in the battle of wits that follows, Ronald; a Cockney evacuee (George Cole) intervenes, and Perry and his associates are unmasked. Trentley is cleared and Perry and his two accomplices are killed in a gunfight at a bazaar.

Excerpt© ‘Puffin Asquith’ by R.J. Minney.