The Silent Passenger | |
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Film credits
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Directed by | Reginald Denham |
Produced by | Hugh Perceval |
Written by | Basil Mason |
Based on | a story by Dorothy L. Sayers |
Starring |
John Loder Peter Haddon |
Music by | Percival Mackey |
Cinematography | Jan Stallich |
Edited by | Thorold Dickinson |
Release date
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Running time
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75 minutes |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
The Silent Passenger is a British black-and-white mystery film produced in 1935 at Ealing Studios, London. This was the first film outing for novelist Dorothy L. Sayers' fictional amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey. It was based on an original story written by Sayers specifically for the screen. Her amateur sleuth was portrayed as a somewhat eccentric imbecile who solved murders in spite of himself.
A blackmailer is murdered by the husband of one of his victims, railway detective Henry Camberley (Donald Wolfit), but it is the innocent John Ryder (John Loder) who is suspected of the murder when Camberley puts the dead body into his trunk. After making the casual acquaintance of Ryder, amateur detective Lord Peter Wimsey (Peter Haddon) sets about proving his friend's innocence. All these events take place while on a train trip from London to the English Channel, with Ryder acting as "bait" to flush out the real killer and solve the murder.