A 75-minute claustrophobic nightmare where George Cole plays against type as a broken man drowning in silence.
Douglas Willetts is a shrew of a man in his mid-40s, barely able to communicate and renting a bedroom in a typically working-class two up-two down. Only he has a bit of a past. For Douglas, every day is just a question of getting through it as painlessly as possible – and that usually means retreating to his bedroom. Is it in order to escape the mundanities of the present? Or to ruminate on his past?
Acting
George Cole's devastating against-type performance.
Direction
Browne-Wilkinson's suffocating two-up-two-down framing.
Director
Anthea Browne-Wilkinson
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Anthea Browne-Wilkinson directed only this single feature before vanishing from cinema; it played once on BBC2 in 1971 and was considered lost until a 16mm print surfaced in 2019.
Shot in Smethwick during the final gasp of British New Wave realism, it captures a Midlands industrial landscape already disappearing—Douglas's sealed bedroom mirrors the boarded-up factories outside.
US
GB
