Cloudburst

Sometimes film noir can be emotionally moving, which is particularly surprising when the protagonist is a cryptologist, as in Francis Searle’s Cloudburst, an unusual, romantic revenge tale that depicts the effects of World War II’s atrocities on the individual human psyche. Delivering a restrained performance, Robert Preston somehow manages to embody both love and hate simultaneously as John Graham, a cryptologist and former Special Operations Executive who was hunted by the Nazis during the war, and the lovely Elizabeth Sellars radiates as his wife Carol who suffered permanent nerve damage when the Gestapo tortured her in an unsuccessful effort to make her reveal John’s location. Years later, pregnant with their first child and closer than ever, Carol is killed in the road by a hit-and-run driver right in front of John, who suffers injuries when trying to detain the driver and his passenger. As if keeping Carol alive through their bond of vengeance, John spends the remainder of the film secretly hunting down his wife’s murderers to make them suffer. Scenes of brutality alternate with love and grief, but Searle maintains a halcyon atmosphere that implies an emotional puzzle throughout. “John, you’ve broken so many codes,” says Inspector Davis (Colin Tapley). “Do you have to break the moral code too?”