by Allan Fish
(UK 1947 101m)DVD2
Aka. I Became a Criminal
Appointment at the Valhalla
p Nat Bronsten, James Carter d Alberto Cavalcanti w Noel Langley novel “A Convict Has Escaped” by Jackson Budd ph Otto Heller ed Marjorie Saunders m Marius-François Gaillard art Andrew Mazzei
Trevor Howard (Clem Morgan), Sally Gray (Sally Connor),GriffithJones (Narcie), Mary Merrall (Aggie), Vida Hope (Mrs Fenshaw), Ballard Berkeley (Inspector Rockcliffe), René Ray (Cora), Peter Bull (Fidgety Phil), Maurice Denham (Mr Fenshaw), Charles Farrell (Curley), Eve Ashley (Ellen), Jack McNaughton (Soapy), Michael Brennan (Jim),
It was the most creative and productive period in British cinema history, the era when Powell & Pressburger, Lean, Reed, Jennings, Launder & Gilliat and the Boultings were all doing their best work, when Ealing studios, though not entering their classic comedy phase, were coming to the fore. At that self-same studio Cavalcanti had made Nicholas Nickleby in response to the success of Rank’s David Lean classic Great Expectations. A few performances aside (Alfie Drayton’s Whackford Squeers and Cedric Hardwicke’s villainous Uncle Ralph especially), it wasn’t a success, and followed in the tradition of English nostalgia Cavalcanti had mined previously. They Made Me a Fugitive, released the same year as Nickleby, could not have been a bigger departure. It was that rarest of beasts, a truly British, ultra-pessimistic thriller that gets better and better with age.
Clem Morgan is a former RAF pilot who’s struggling in the demob post-war era and needs a job to prevent him falling into drunken perdition. He’s offered a job in the world of ‘free enterprise’ (black market, to you and me) by wide-boy spiv Narcie (short for Narcissus, and with his almost pimp-like taste in clothes, it’s not an inappropriate name). When Morgan objects to trafficking hard drugs (sherbet as it’s called here) Narcie gets him framed for the manslaughter of a cop after a deliberately botched robbery and Morgan is sent down for 15 years toDartmoor. In the meantime, Narcie takes up with Morgan’s floozy, Ellen, to the chagrin of chorus girl, Sally. Sally comes to visit Morgan in prison to pitch the idea of a former colleague of Narcie’s, Soapy turning king’s evidence. Morgan doesn’t think she’s on the level, preferring to deal with Narcie his own way, which he begins by breaking out of prison.
True classic British noirs, especially ones not based on famous novels (such as those based on Graham Greene) are hardly the stuff of mass produce. Indeed, only two feature here, the other being the not dissimilarly titled and even rarer They Drive by Night. Both feature guys on the run for crimes they didn’t commit. Both feature the abduction of trucks on the road. Yet that’s where the similarities end, for while the earlier film owed much to the French poetic realist school, Cavalcanti’s belongs strictly in the dark world of classic film noir. You wouldn’t believe the script from this film was by one of the writers of The Wizard of Oz, for it’s full of tasty vinaigrettes of dialogue, and Otto Heller’s photography has a shadowy texture worthy of Alton or Musuraca in Hollywood but with a distinct German expressionist tinge. And at the centre, as ever, Cavalcanti does a wonderful job with his actors. The ever-excellent Howard and Gray reunite a million miles away from Green for Danger, the latter never better, and never more suited than to noir, with her impenetrable, come-hither face and figure to dream of. Mary Merrall has a deliciously against-type part as Narcie’s equivalent of Cagney’s Margaret Wycherley with a passion for cheating at solitaire, while Jones proves one of the great nasty pieces of work in British film, a misogynistic, sadistic slime-ball. With classic fight scenes in the back of an undertaker’s and on a rooftop, a romance built over the removal of lead shot from the hero’s back with tweezers and a surreal encounter with a drunk’s murderous wife (Vida Hope) that makes one wish for a film of her own, it’s a film that should be far better known than it is, and a precursor of Losey’s The Criminal and every British crime classic since.
Allan, I’m so pleased you’ve written about this film and in a way that I’m sure will pique the interest of noir fanatics. TCM has just started showing this in the US, where I saw it a few months ago, and I was most impressed. I’ve seen only a few British films that I would consider true film noirs, but this is one and maybe the closest to American film noir of any I’ve seen, which should be pretty plain from the way you describe it in your review. (The others are Reed’s “Odd Man Out” and “The Third Man,” of course, and also Losey’s “The Criminal.”) Trevor Howard has never been better, and Griffith Jones is truly scary as his psycho nemesis. An excellent and really entertaining film in all respects. And the British “They Drive by Night” sounds very intriguing too.
Indeed, seek out They Drive, Finchy. The Criminal is actually coming up quite soon…
They Made Me A Fugitive is not very obscure in the states. A region 1 release on Kino makes it a rather easy film to obtain. Most noir fans have seen it and own a copy. I like the film a great deal, though I wouldn’t say its an absolute classic. Clem’s encounter while on the lamb with a woman who just so happens to want to kill her husband is an improbable stretch. Some of the action scenes (especially when Narcy tries to frame Clem in the car accident) are poorly staged and extremely fake looking. Sally Gray should of been replaced with someone more believable, and the gun throw to end the fight at the climax is a unconvincing letdown. Overall though not a bad film, and worthy of some attention from those who have not seen it.
TheObscuro is I think being taken a little too literally here. It sounded better than pot pourri. But if you want obscure, wait a week or two.