Phone Call from a Stranger

CinemaSerf

Gary Merrill is "David Trask", a lawyer on a flight from Chicago that is delayed en route by bad weather. Whilst travelling he befriends three of his companions and they share really quite personal stories to help pass the time. When their flight resumes, it crashes and all but three perish."Trask" sets out to track down the families of his three friends and finds each with a story to tell. The first features Michael Rennie as a doctor with a guilty secret who has turned to drink and compromised his relationship with his family. The second involves aspiring actress Shelley Winters who is returning to her husband and his rather over-bearing mother and the third a bed-ridden Bette Davis. Each visit helps to alleviate their suffering and the performances are strong with eventually Merrill realising a few things about his own situation that makes him think again. The stories, themselves, are just a little too melodramatic however, and I found Franz Waxman's score a bit intrusive as it sometimes does just a bit too much of Merrill's acting for him. Well worth a watch, though - particularly for an on-form Winters.