Time Without Pity (1957) is an example of Joseph Losey's work as a director from the transition period between his American films and his later, more European work. At the time, Losey was rebuilding his career as a director after fleeing from his homeland after being blacklisted for his Communist leanings of an earlier era. Losey showed a number of interests throughout his career, many of which are reflected in this British crime drama--a strong social consciousness, a sense of the plight of the individual when faced with the institutions of society, a search for justice in world that often denies it, and a strong sense of the ambiguities of reality.
Losey does not see the world in black and white terms but in terms of complexities, and his characters show ambiguities in their personalities that indicate the degree to which we are all mixtures of innocence and guilt. This is certainly true of the protagonist of Time Without Pity. Graham, played by Michael Redgrave, is intent on proving his son's innocence, but he himself has already been guilty of neglecting the young man and of turning to alcohol to dull the pain his life has become. He comes back into his son's life precisely because he believes the young man is innocent of the murder for which he will be executed if his father does not succeed in identifying the real killer. The material suggests many examples of film melodrama, but Losey treats the material in a somewhat different manner, showing that he is more interested in developing the characters and in the meaning of their interplay than he is in creating a mystery or a thriller. For one thing, the audience knows for certain who is guilty from the first and so never questions whether or not the young man is guilty--we know him to be innocent. We also know that the father quickly fastens on the correct killer. The film then becomes both a race against time and a psychological battle between the father and the k...