Unaccountably forgotten Best Pic Winner @ BAFTA, this quotidian policier holds up nicely, less from a solid, but familiar robbery/murder, than from the deep dive director Basil Dearden (at the start of his best period) & cinematographer Gordon Dines’ make into the suspended animation of post-war London: rationing, food shortages, war-damaged neighborhoods & infrastructure, a hobbled economy & general malaise. Wonderfully caught Brit noir fashion, it plays into a ‘good cop’ story about an old-timer and his new partner as they hunt down a couple of low-life punks (including callow youth Dirk Bogarde*) whose carefully plotted robbery goes off-track and sets the entire police force after them and the hysterical girl they’ve involved in the crime. Beat cops Jack Warner & Jimmy Hanley get top-billing*, but the big role (and best perf) is fifth-billed Bernard Lee (‘M’ of the early James Bond pics) as Detective Inspector in overall charge of the case. And it’s likely that scripter T.E.B. Clark (a regular writer at Ealing Studios, best known for comedy) knew it, too, since he gives Lee a running character gag which is turned around right at the end in ridiculously satisfying fashion. But then, the whole film is that way, touching & empathetic.
DOUBLE-BILL: *Ealing hit some of the same notes of lower-middle-class post-war deprivation in the kitchen-sink drama IT ALWAYS RAINS ON SUNDAY/’47 which also sees Jack Warner in his usual policeman’s spot. His partner in LAMP, Jimmy Hanley, also here, but not on the force.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *By the time this opened in Italy, Dirk Bogarde had leap-frogged past his co-stars. (See poster.)
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