Waterloo Road is a tidily produced picture that is telling a pretty prickly story. The plot revolves around John Mills everyman railway worker Jim Colte, he gets called up to do his service in the army, leaving behind his recently wedded bride, Tillie. The local Lothario, Ted Purvis {Stewart Granger} has his eye on Tillie, and with Tillie feeling alone and vulnerable, Purvis may just get his wicked way with her. But Jim gets wind of this and after being refused compassionate leave by his superiors, he goes AWOL and intends to track Purvis down. We are told this story by Alastair Sim's wonderfully astute Dr.Montgomery, who has been sent a fair bit of work from previous Purvis doings. The film plays out with Jim dodging the military police and lurching from one Purvis haunt to another, inter cut with this is us following Purvis and Tillie out on the town as the day of reckoning for all three of them draws near. When the finale comes it's well worth the wait, mighty midget John Mills {brilliant here} facing off against the tall and fulsome Stewart Granger, just as Adolf decides to bomb London!. A smashing little film that is risqué with it's themes of unfaithful wives and soldiers absconding from service. 7/10

It may well have passed muster at the tail end of the war but seen today the flaws are there for all to see. Stewart Granger's working class accent is a joke and his wooden, over-the-top acting little better. John Mills phones it in as the 'decent' man who goes AWOL when he hears that wife, Joy Shelton, is stepping out with Granger's spiv whilst he, Mills, is doing his bit. The two best performances by a mile are turned in by Beatrice Varley and Alison Leggatt as Mills' mother and sister and Jean Kent weighs in with a passable cameo but the climactic fist fight between Purvis (Granger) and Colter (Mills) is embarrassing. Definitely a Waterloo sunset.

Waterloo Road is sometimes forgotten among the hundreds of films made by the late, great Sir John Mills, but it gave him one of his best roles at a time when British Film studios were churning out a handful of films each week for to satisfy the public.He plays Jim Colter, a former railway employee, now called up who goes AWOL to find Ted Purvis (Stewart Granger), a spiv and draft dodger who is seeing his wife (an excellent performance by Joy Shelton). The action takes place over a single day in, and around, Waterloo Station. In almost social realism style the camera follows the action through real streets, and includes an early amusement arcade (check those machines and the customers), a dance hall, tea shop and a tattoo parlour in a road called 'The Cut'. I watched this with my Mother(now 79)as its her favourite John Mills Film, and she remembers passing by this parlour and seeing the 'tattooed lady' poster when, as a 14 year old shop assistant, she worked at Waterloo Station during the blitz.It is a well crafted film: not many scenes are wasted and the script is tight and balanced between light and serious dialogue. Another surprise is how energetic Mills is. He leaps across tables and through windows like an acrobat. The fight scene is as well filmed and choreographed as any American Film Noir of the time, and even allowing for library clips of the blitz (which can be seen in other wartime films), the bombing sequence is as close to the real thing as the studio could make it.My favourite performance and /or character? Ben Williams playing the hapless Military Policeman Corporal Lewis forever chasing Mills around 'The Cut'. How often are films today enhanced by the Extra Players?

I wonder how daring this film was for wartime with a sympathetic treatment of soldiers AWOL? Also unfaithful wifes, a worry to many soldiers, the ones that weren't frollicking with girls in liberated countries of course. My interest were lots of authentic outdoor scenes in wartime London. Only criticism was the requirement for the cad to be doubly punished!! (Villains had to be seen to punished for it to get by the censor). Alister Sims seemed menacing even though he was playing a good guy.