The Lost People – 1949 | 89 mins | War, Drama | B&W

Plot Synopsis

Bridget Boland’s play, Cockpit, which tackled the problem of Europeans left homeless after WWII, was well-meaning and audaciously experimental when the play was performed on the stage and in the auditorium. This Gainsborough Pictures screen adaptation remains confined to one set but the transfer doesn’t work. It’s stagebound, talky and lacking in stimulus, and supplementary love scenes courtesy of Muriel Box stick out like sore thumbs.

The story takes place in a disused theatre in Germany at the end of the war doubling as a Dispersal Centre for refugees from all parts of Europe. British officer Captain Ridley (Dennis Price) and Sergeant Barnes (William Hartnell) under him attempt to get the displaced people of many nationalities to cooperate without much success. But then a dying man is believed to have the bubonic plague, the theatre is quarantined and the people put aside their differences and pull together. Once the plague theory is discounted, they jump at each others’ throats again, resulting in an innocent young woman being murdered.