The Scarlet Thread

Director: Lewis Gilbert.
Producer: Ernest G. Roy.
Script: A.R. Rawlinson. (from the play by Moie Charles and A.R. Rawlinson)
Cinematography: Geoffrey Faithfull.
Editing: Peter Pitt.
Original Music: Kenneth Morrison.

Kathleen Byron - Josephine
Laurence Harvey - Freddie
Sydney Tafler - Marcon
Arthur Hill - Shaw
Dora Bryan - Maggie
Eliot Makeham - Jason
Harry Fowler - Sam

Downbeat British thriller directed by Lewis Gilbert with Laurence Harvey in one of his early leading roles as a convincingly unpleasant spiv. Despite a fast-moving opening, the film quickly becomes bogged down in dialogue and betrays its stageplay origins.

Small-time pickpocket Freddie (Laurence Harvey) joins up with moneyed London hood Marcon (Sydney Tafler) and getaway driver Sam (Harry Fowler) to pull off a jewellery robbery in Cambridge. After killing an innocent bystander that tries to prevent the making their getaway during the raid, they seek refuge at a Cambridge University. Womanising Freddie encounters Josephine (Kathleen Byron), the love-starved daughter of a University professor and sets about romancing her, not realising she is the daughter of the murdered bystander.