ABSTRACT
The advent of the sound track in the late 1920s brought about Hollywood stage-play adaptations on a grand scale, Sutton Vane’s 1923 Outward Bound being an obvious choice. Warner Brothers signed up Robert Milton, who had directed the play, and as far as possible all the players who had appeared in the original Broadway production. The plot concerns a young couple in love (Douglas Fairbanks junior, Helen Chandler) who attempt suicide by turning on the gas tap in their humble London flat. The film’s action is the man’s dream while he is unconscious before their dog Laddie saves them by breaking a window but dies in the process. Shortly after their first appearance a strange-looking ship is seen through the fog with the couple aboard accompanied by several other passengers. One, the alcoholic Tom Prior (Leslie Howard in his first film), discovers that the ship has no lights, and slowly the realization dawns that they are all dead, none of them being able to recollect their destination. It gradually emerges that they are all bound for purgatory because of their misdemeanours in life, except for one young clergyman whose function is the redemption of the others when they are in effect sentenced by the Examiner. The couple is allowed a second chance not to take the cowardly way out owing to Laddie’s unselfish sacrifice.
