The Woman with No Name

Waking up in hospital, a woman looks at herself in a mirror, but the face that stares back is a stranger, her name and background a mystery. Thus begins her quest to find out who she is – a search hampered by the antagonism and deceit of the family the woman rejoins. Phyllis Calvert’s collaboration with director Ladislao Vajda was an attempt to break free of studios and gain control of her career. Her character’s gradual self-discovery provides her with a nuanced role that expanded the ‘nice girl’ screen persona she’d established in the Gainsborough melodramas.

See our season Great Expectations: British Postwar Cinema 1945-1960.