Quiller

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about old British thriller films. The types from the 40’s and 50’s, early 60’s, that were usually black and white.

I don’t know of as many as I’d like. I get the impression that there are loads out there, along with smaller B movies that run around the 60-minute mark.

Some are genuine film noirs, others are crime thrillers with noirish elements.

Brit Noir films I’m particularly interested in knowing about, as I think this is a neglected area of British film industry that deserves to be appreciated.

The only ones I can think of are The Third Man; Obsession; Odd Man Out; The Long Memory; The Man Between; Hell Drivers; Robbery; and The Good Die Young.

So if any of you know of any Brit noir titles – any at all – please list them here, f you don’t mind. Cheers. ;)

(And Fallen Idol, and maybe A Kid For Two Farthings.)

dylan

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Robert Murphy's The British Cinema Book has a piece by Raymond Durgnat entitled *Some Lines Of Inquiry Into Post-War British Crimes*. Durgnat surveys British crime genre films from 1945-49 and looks at 3 aspects of the sub-genre he calls *middle-class noir*:

I. Incomes and Inheritances.

Films which reflect the decline and fall of the upper middle classes and the rise of the lower classes. Oddly enough he cites the two historical bodice rippers, Blache Fury and Jassy, as examples.

II. The Portman Murders.

On stronger ground, Durgnet looks at a series of films starring Eric Portman in which he frequently kills out of sexual jealousy, offended vanity or cold pathology:

Wanted For Murder (Lawrence Huntingdon, 1945) Portman is a serial killer whose motives are linked with his forefather, a public hangman.

Daybreak (Compton Bennett,1946) Portman is the public hangman who frames his wife's seducer, Maxwell Reed, for his own murder.

Dear Murderer (Arthur Crabtree, 1947) EP out to kill his wife's lover, Maxwell Reed again.

The Mark of Cain (Brian Desmond Hurst, 1947) To wed Sally Gray EP poisons her brother but inadvertently frames her.

Corridor of Mirrors (Terence Young,1947) EP is a rich mystical aesthete who believes he killed Edana Romney in a previous incarnation and this obsession is fuelled by his possessive housekeeper, mother-figure, Barbara Mullen.

Similar non-EP films featuring lady-killers Richard Greene and Dennis Price are Now Barrabbas Was A Robber (Gordon Parry, 1949) and Holiday Camp (Ken Annakin, 1947)

III. The Gentle Sex.

Durgnat looks at the lady poisoners cum femmes fatales of the period and deduces that money and respectability are their motives rather than the mad emotions EP displays.

Pink String And Sealing Wax (Robert Hamer, 1945) Googie Withers seduces shy pharmacist, Gordon Jackson, to obtain poison to kill her husband.

Bedelia (Lance Comfort, 1946) Socialite Margaret Lockwood poisons 3 spouses.

So Evil, My Love (Lewis Allen, 1948) Ann Todd, a missionary's widow, is seduced by Ray Milland with whom she enters into a web of blackmail and poisoning.

This Was A Woman (Tim Whelan, 1948) Matriarch Sonia Dresdel poisons her husband to get a richer one.

Daughter Of Darkness (Lance Comfort, 1948) Siobhan McKenna is a nymphomaniac Irish girl persecuted by the village wifes who kills her lovers during the sexual act (phew - 1948!).

Madeleine (David Lean,1950) Ann Todd plots to preserve her respectability by poisoning her French lover.

I would also add:

Arthur Wood's They Drive By Night (1938) in which ex-jail bird, Emlyn Williams, is believed to be a serial sex killer. Not to be confused with the 1940 Bogart film of the same name.

Roy Ward Baker's The October Man (1947) with John Mills as the suspected killer of Kay Walsh.

D.

dylan

I forgot perhaps the two most obvious ones:

Robert Hamer's It Always Rains on Sunday (1948)

Jules Dassin's Night and the City (1950)

D

Quiller

Dylan, I've seen so few of those films you've mentioned. I've only seen Pink String and Ceiling Wax, with Gordon Jackson in, and The October Man - where Mills has amnesia?

I've remembered The Seventh Veil. As odd as noir, more of a thriller, with Ann Todd, James Mason, and Herbert Lom as the psychiatrist.

Those Eric Portman films sound fantastic!

Thanks for the informative info.

Night And The City is one those films I've always wanted to see. Anything with Widmark in I love, and I'm partial to Dassin's films.

dylan

A few more:

On the Night of the Fire (1940)

Brighton Rock (1947)

No Orchids for Miss Blandish (1948)

Cosh Boy (1952)

House Across the Lake (1954)

The Sleeping Tiger (1954)

Little Red Monkey (1955)

Tiger in the Smoke (1956)

Yeild to the Night (1956)

The Intimate Stranger (1956)

Time Without Pity (1957)

Blind Date (1959)

Cover Girl Killer (1959)

Hell is a City (1960)

The Criminal (1960)

Payroll (1961)

Victim (1961)

All Night Long (1961)

A Prize of Arms (1962)

The Painted Smile (1962)

Girl in the Headlines (1963)

D.

Nick Dando

Mr Denning Drives North

Quiller

Dylan, this is turning into a very impressive list of films.

Some of these titles are amazingly noirish. No Orchids For Miss Blandish. I've read a few of James Hadley Chase's novels, and would really like to see this film. I've heard it was quite controversial when it was released. Later re-done in Aldrich's The Grissom Gang - which was very good.

Nick, Mr Denning Drives North. Is that a John Mills film?

Brighton Rock! How could I have forgotten that one.

DB7

They Made me a Fugitive and Man on the Run.

DB7

Dylan beat me to one of my favourites, They Drive by Night, noirish but also very Hitchcockian.

Steve Crook

The Small Back Room (1949)

Steve

Quiller

DB7, I've not heard of those. Nice titles.

Steve, The Small Back Room. I think I've seen a still of that with a giant whiskey bottle or something?

Steve Crook

That's the one. But the rest of it is classic British Noir

Steve

dylan

I nominate Trevor Howard as the quintessential British noir hero (They Made Me a Fugitive, The Third Man, The Clouded Yellow, Golden Salamander etc) often playing a cynical, dissallusioned ex-officer.

D.

Quiller

Steve, sounds like a great film, with the usual visual excellance of a Powell & Pressburger production. ***sigh*** and look what we make now.:rolleyes:

Dylan, love Trevor Howard films. He's always watchable, and he's got a wicked screen prescence. I could listen to his voice for hours.

Someone spotted Howard in a pub, went up to him: "Aren't you Trevor Howard?"
"Only when I'm acting," he replied.

Rob Compton

"The Clouded Yellow" is a great film, a favourite of mine:)

rgds
Rob