Time Without Pity

Director: Joseph Losey

1957 / 85min / 35mm

An impassioned protest against capital punishment, still decades away from abolition in the United Kingdom when Time Without Pity was released, this taut thriller by American blacklist refugee Losey—credited onscreen for the first time since leaving the States—stars Michael Redgrave as a recovering alcoholic who, back in England after a stay at a Canadian sanitarium, has only 24 hours in which to prove his son, slated to be executed by the state for his girlfriend’s murder, is in fact innocent… all while trying not to fall off the wagon. Only Francis’s second film as a cinematographer, and one that finds the full range of his talent already much in evidence, Time Without Pity helped re-establish Losey’s reputation—and also introduced Francis to cast member Peter Cushing, whom he would go on to direct in eight films.

Print courtesy of BFI National Archive