This film is a splendid achievement, weaving together satisfactorily as it does the stories of a group of people preceding their coming together one fatal evening on a London Number 134 bus. The evening is that of Friday the thirteenth, and disaster occurs, as lightning strikes a crane and causes it to come crashing down onto the bus. Two people are killed, but we are not allowed to know which two until the end of the film's multiple flashbacks. Numerous well known actors of the period appear in this ensemble drama. One character, a slippery and unctuous crook named Blake who 'lives by his wits', is superbly played by Emlyn Williams, who also wrote the electric and crackling dialogue for this film. The wit and quickness of the complex dialogue helps to give this film a much deeper dimension. The young female lead is played by Jessie Matthews, who is as charming as her audience at the time would have expected, considering how popular she was then, and indeed deserved to be. The film is wonderfully directed by Victor Saville. He had already worked with Matthews and would do so again, as he would with Emlyn Williams the following year. The multi-stories are really well-structured and take place in a variety of locations. This gives us a treat, for we are able to see many areas of London as they were in 1932. I noticed for instance that the price of a payphone call at that time was only tuppence. And on the bus itself, someone asks for 'a penny ticket' but then realizes he has been robbed of all his money before boarding the bus, so Emlyn Williams, feeling flush after a blackmail payoff, holds up a single copper and gives it to the bus conductor. Yes, bus conductors! And how we miss them! They were always good for a laugh and some banter, as well as useful advice on which was really the best stop, and how to change, and how long everything would take. I am only surprised that bus conductors, although long gone, have not also been replaced by call centres in India so that people are asked on their mobile phones to press 1, 2, 3, or 4, for their travel advice nowadays, since humans have gone out of fashion. There are many fine performances in the film, such as by Ralph Richardson and Max Miller the music hall comedian. We see extensive shots of the old Caledonian Market at its original site off Caledonian Road in Islington, which closed when the Second World War began. (After the War it reopened at Bermondsey.) There is indeed a great deal to see of Pre-War London, and a great deal to enjoy from a very fine film.

Actually Friday the thirteenth was a lucky date for Jessie Matthews – that was the night in February 1925 in Toronto that she became a leading lady of the stage at 17 years old after understudying Gertrude Lawrence. I hadn't seen this little film gem since the '90's - UK Channel 4 used to screen a good quality copy - but remembered it word for word. Plenty of British films from the early '30's are either thoughtful or entertaining, this managed to be both although technologically (and logically) as primitive as usual.London midnight bus crashes into a building to avoid a falling crane and two of its passengers are killed. A rather flimsy Big Ben rewinds to the morning and we begin to see retrospectively unfolding the various and varied lives of the people involved in the crash and what led to them being on the bus. It was a talkie remake of a 1929 film The Bridge At San Luis Rey regarding a collapsing bridge and the people who were either affected or killed. So, there's a good tight script flashing between all the characters, and what a set of characters! Jessie Matthews as a wide-eyed "non stop" hoofer and her then brand new husband Sonnie Hale as the cynical bus conductor, Ralph Richardson played her lover as an energetic school teacher (and they apparently got on very well on set too), babe in the park Robertson Hare, Edmund Gwenn, Max Miller with some of his fastest ever patter, Hartley Power, the film's co-scriptwriter Emlyn Williams as a sinister blackmailer, and many other British regulars were in attendance. You might have some fun trying to work out who might end up dead, but ultimately it all follows fairly conventional moral lines – one end just, the other bittersweet. If remade nowadays of course this film's probable ending would be that a character playing a mass-murdering pervert would be the only one to survive – and would not be meant as irony but as a happy ending.Jessie had such a busy year in 1933 she collapsed with nervous exhaustion which made the commencement of the shooting of her classic Evergreen difficult – FTT turned out to be a different type of classic. It's a simple and perfectly packed potpourri of tales, to be sure it displays the mores, prejudices and snobbery of the time but the basic tales can all be still applied to today and are engrossing to watch from start to finish.

This is an exceptional film. It is part comedy, part drama, part suspense. The dialog is exquisite. Most of the actors and actresses were very famous in their time, and for good reason. You will probably recognize someone, even if you don't usually watch older movies. They are also each in a role that particularly suits their talents. One correction to make on another users comment is that two people, not one, are announced to die in the accident. Maybe the unlucky two are a reflection of what the writer considers important in life. The movie is too engaging to worry about who it is until it happens.The story is ahead of its time, but it does not lose the quality of an older movie. Time and effort was spent perfecting the camera's view and the soundtrack, something modern movie makers tend to forget.

This movie pops up now and again on the ABC in Australia at about 3 am in the morning.It starts off with the scene of a bus crash in London.The films has got flashbacks of each character as the film progresses, plus the lapsed photography of Big Ben winding back, to symbolise what events occurred thirteen hours ago, up until the bus crash.It took me a while to understand it, but it was enjoyable nonetheless.If Sean Cunningham and Quentin Tarrantino got together and made a film, this may be the result - due to the flashbacks and small stories tying in, and deaths.I am unsure of the main characters, as it has been a while since I have seen it, but a rare gem indeed.