Nearly five years ago, I reviewed a DVD collection of British noir films. I was not particularly enthused by it. Truth be told, I was not yet a noir aficionado. Oh, I’d seen the big ones – films like The Big Sleep, Double Indemnity, and The Third Man—but I had no real idea of the depth and breadth of the genre. In the same way, I’d not seen that many British films – again outside of the big ones like Lawrence of Arabia, The Bridge on the River Kwai, the Monty Python films, James Bond, and some of the British Hitchcocks. But I in no way had dove deep into their very rich film history.
Buy Brit Noir Collection IISo I wasn’t prepared for what a British film noir would look and feel like. They were very different from their American counterparts (at least the ones I’ve seen). But in the ensuing half decade, I’ve watched lots and lots of film noirs, and I have dug deep into British film history. So coming to this collection of film noirs from Britain, I was much more prepared, and thus I enjoyed these films a great deal more. I should probably revisit that earlier collection and see how I feel about them now.
As I started watching more British films, one name began to stand out: Jack Hawkins. He was a very big star in the 1950s, usually playing military commanders and police superintendents. He simply projected an air of authority. And it is such in these three films.
Well, actually, in the first film, Home at Seven (1952), he isn’t in the army or the police force, but rather a doctor. But he still projects authority. He isn’t the star either; that would be Ralph Richardson, who also directed. He plays David Preston, a London banker who returns one evening to find his wife Janet (Margaret Leighton) completely distraught. She says he didn’t come home the previous evening, and she’s been terribly worried.
Puzzled, he proclaims that of course he was home last night. He was home all day as a matter of fact because it was Sunday, his day off. Today is Monday, and he went to work as usual. But she shows him a newspaper showing today is Tuesday. Furthermore, she called the office, and his boss said he had not been in all day. His boss then calls him to check up and confirms that David was not in that day.
Just while he’s wrapping his head around this news, his neighbor comes in. He’s the president of the local club; David is the treasurer. He says he just saw one of the club members who proclaimed that David was there last night, and he took out all the money in the safe. Soon thereafter, they’ll hear news reports that the club member was murdered that evening. David begins to suspect that he may have done all these horrible things, but he simply can’t remember.
The police start to suspect him, too. But his friend and physician, Dr. Sparling Sparling (Hawkins), thinks the blackout must have come due to some great psychological trigger, probably stemming from his time in the war. And it is highly unlikely he would have committed these crimes under that strain.
That’s the thing about British noir; they are often completely soaked in the aftermath of World War II. American noirs will sometimes have a former soldier in them, but not usually. They do often come with a post-war cynicism as if after the horrors of the war, nothing really matters anymore. But for America, the war was something that happened over there, in places most Americans had never visited, or even heard of. Except for the soldiers, everybody else read about it in the newspapers. But the English lived it. The war was happening just across the channel in places they’d taken a holiday before. They were being bombed every night. They still lived amongst the rubble. These films indicate that.
Anyway, Preston spends the rest of the film trying to find out exactly what happened, hoping against hope it wasn’t him that done it.
The Intruder (1953) brings Hawkins and the war front and center. Hawkins plays Col. Wolf Merton, who commanded a tank battalion. While out playing a round of golf at a nice club, he accidentally hits a ball into a junkyard full of old tanks. The country is simply littered with artifacts from the war.
When he returns home that evening, he finds his home being burgled. But he recognizes the thief. It is Ginger Edwards (Michael Medwin) who served bravely under his command. Merton attempts to talk to him, even help him, but Edwards is scared and runs away.
Merton will spend the rest of the film hunting down many of the men in his old regiment who might have known Edwards. As he talks to them, the film flashes back to the war, and we see how men like Edwards were good, solid soldiers, and utterly brave, while other men were cowards. Sometimes, the good men found themselves in desperate situations after the war, and the cowards have become quite successful.
It reminded me of the final episode of Band of Brothers, where we find that these men who fought so bravely and valiantly in the war went home to become cab drivers and bakers, completely ordinary things. This film shows us too, that when war heroes come home, they still have to find a life for themselves.
The Long Arm (1956) is the most classically noir film of the bunch. It is also my favorite. When someone robs a safe in central London, the police, led by Superintendent Tom Halliday (Hawkins), are called in to investigate. Halliday is assisted by a new and eager detective, Sergeant Ward (John Stratton.) They will use every resource available to them to track down the culprit. Especially when they find out the thief has robbed numerous stores over the last several months and after he kills an ordinary citizen whilst trying to escape.
It is very much a procedural, but a very good one. Halliday has a wife and son at home. He promised them that when he became a superintendent, he’d stop chasing bad guys on the street. That he’d be the guy in the office telling his men what to do. But this case gets under his skin. He’s out there every night with Ward (who has a girlfriend who must be beginning to understand what it’s like to be with a copper).
It is fascinating to watch a procedural from this long ago and see how they used to do things. There were no computers, no DNA. They used an index file and shoe leather. I love that sort of thing, and I truly enjoyed this film.
The more British noirs I watch, the more I love the genre. The same is true for Jack Hawkins films. If you are new to those things or an old fan, this set is an excellent thing to add to your collection. Extras for this set include audio commentaries on all three films.
