Given that I reviewed Raj Khosla’s 1958 film Kaala Paani—based on AJ Cronin’s novel Beyond This Place—last month, I thought it appropriate to also watch and review an English-language adaptation of the same book. And, as always happens when I do something of the sort, to compare the two, see what they do with the same source material. Here, I must point out that that I haven’t read Cronin’s novel, so I cannot say how much Beyond This Place (directed by Jack Cardiff and with a screenplay by Ken Taylor) resembled Cronin’s book.

But, to begin at the beginning.

As the credits roll, we see a man, Patrick Mathry (Bernard Lee) and a boy, Patrick’s son Paul (Vincent Winter) running through the woods, laughing and obviously happy in each other’s company.