Passage Home ** (1955, Peter Finch, Anthony Steel, Diane Cilento) – Classic Movie Review 13,530

‘A DESIRABLE WOMAN… more hazardous than the raging sea!’ The 1955 British drama film Passage Home is based on a novel by Richard Armstrong, and stars Peter Finch, Anthony Steel and Diane Cilento.

Director Roy Ward Baker’s 1955 British black and white drama film Passage Home is based on a 1952 novel by Richard Armstrong, with a screenplay by William Fairchild, and stars Peter Finch, Anthony Steel and Diane Cilento.

When a British merchant ship returning home from South America is forced to take sexy British governess Ruth Elton (Diane Cilento) aboard, trouble is not long brewing, especially when the skipper, Captain ‘Lucky’ Ryland (Peter Finch), gets drunk.

Peter Finch as ‘Lucky’ Ryland and Anthony Steel as Second Mate Vosper provide the love triangle’s other sides when they both fall for Ruth, in this leaky, creaky, squeaky melodrama, but Roy Ward Baker’s direction and the Group Film Productions and Rank studio’s production put the fusty old ingredients across with aplomb, especially with these incredibly decent performances of the first class of passenger aboard.

The film was shot at the Rank studio’s Pinewood Studios, Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, England, in November 1954.

It was Finch’s first film under his new five-year contract with the Rank Organisation and was Michael Craig first film under his new contract to Rank.

Roy Baker recalled: ‘Passage Home had a marvellous cast. Peter Finch was such great fun and a very, very good actor.’

The cast are Peter Finch, Anthony Steel, Diane Cilento, Cyril Cusack, Geoffrey Keen, Hugh Griffith, Duncan Lamont, Bryan Forbes, Gordon Jackson, Michael Craig, Robert Brown, Martin Benson, Patrick McGoohan, Michael Bryant, Sam Kydd, Glyn Houston, Patrick Westwood, George Woodbridge, John Warren, Ian Whittaker, Scott Harold, Arthur Lovegrove, Leonard White, Peter Ventham, Gerald Anderson, and Philip Ray.

© Derek Winnert 2025 – Classic Movie Review 13,530

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