Parky at the Pictures (DVD 23/8/2012)

The first is devoted to John Mills (1908-2005), who came to epitomise the national spirit in over 120 films that spanned the entire generic range. The titles in this four-film selection may not represent his finest work (this is, after all, the fourth Mills compilation), but these are all interesting pictures and demonstrate Mills's versatility and his growing assurance as a screen actor as his career progressed.

Based on a short story by DH Lawrence, Anthony Pélissier's The Rocking Horse Winner (1949) typifies the kind of project that was once the staple of the pre-television British film industry and yet which now, sadly, seems likely never to be made in such numbers again. Literate, serious and psychologically ambitious, this touching drama was produced by Mills himself at a time when a number of Hollywood actors and directors were beginning to package their own assignments. However, its lacklustre box-office performance meant that it failed to initiate a period of artistic autonomy and taught Mills that his fans wanted to see him take heroic or romantic leads rather than genial supporting roles.

Mother of three Valerie Hobson has developed a taste for the finer things in life. Husband Hugh Sinclair tries to provide for her. But, when he loses his job, he has to borrow from smarmy brother-in-law Ronald Squire, who threatens to cut off funds and expose the secret deal when Sinclair begins running up debts. A solution comes form an unlikely source, however, as the couple's son, John Howard Davies, develops the uncanny knack of predicting horse race winners while rocking on the wooden horse in his nursery.

Davies had been taught to sit his mount by handyman John Mills, who becomes concerned that the boy is driving himself into a stupor while seeking inspiration. But Hobson and Sinclair are oblivious to his suffering, as they are too busy splashing out their winnings. Eventually, however, the strain tells in the most tragic of circumstances.

Broodingly photographed by Desmond Dickinson on Carmen Dillon's perfectly observed petit bourgeois sets, this was the first DH Lawrence story to be adapted for the screen. It has since been remade twice (by Bob Bierman in 1982 and by Michael Almereyda in 1998 using a Fisher Price pixel camera), but, this remains the most compelling interpretation. Reuniting with Mills after their success on The History of Mr Polly (1949), Pélissier revives subjective camera techniques pioneered by the German Expressionists in the 1920s to get inside young Davies's mind, as he initially rides to block out Hobson's scolding and then becomes increasingly desperate to please his parents as their hectoring voices echo in his brain.

Barely on screen for 10 minutes in total, Mills is wasted in avuncular support. But Squire makes a hissable cad, while Hobson is infuriatingly self-seeking in a role that couldn't have contrasted more with her prim performance in Robert Hamer's Ealing classic Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949). But it's John Howard Davies (who died a year ago this week) who most impresses, as he builds on his excellent work in David Lean's Oliver Twist (1948) to convey a tenacity that makes his misplaced loyalty towards his parents all the more infelicitous.

Driven along by William Alwyn's pounding score, this was deemed morbid and unsavoury by contemporary critics. Certainly sequences such as Hobson's argument with pawnbroker Charles Goldner, as she tries to raise quick cash to keep bailiff Cyril Smith at bay, presents middle-class attitudes to their supposed social (and racial) inferiors in a dismayingly dim light. But this has since been reappraised alongside the likes of Thorold Dickinson's The Queen of Spades (1949) for its depiction of emotional stress and, while it's a shame that Pélissier abandoned cinema soon afterwards, it's clear to see why he was recruited by the BBC for its experimental production unit.

The growing importance of the small screen was reflected in the fact that Ted Willis's stage play Hot Summer Night has already been transmitted by ITV in the Armchair Theatre strand before Roy Ward Baker reworked it for cinemas under the title Flame in the Streets (1961). Reuniting Mills with Brenda De Banzie (his co-star in David Lean's Hobson's Choice, 1954), this hard-hitting story of inner-city racial tensions was inspired by the 1959 Notting Hill riots. It has often been compared with Basil Dearden's Sapphire (1959; see below), but it is less assured in its depiction of the West Indian community and always seems on firmer ground in discussion industrial unrest that had been tackled with respective humour and gravitas in John Boulting's I'm All Right Jack (1959) and Guy Green's The Angry Silence (1960).

London teacher Sylvia Syms has fallen for black colleague Johnny Sekka, but decides against telling parents John Mills and Brenda De Banzie. Ironically, Mills is facing a revolt at the factory where he is a shop steward, as a cabal of white workers is bent on thwarting his bid to promote Jamaican Earl Cameron to a vacant foreman's post. But Cameron himself is reluctant to put his head above the parapet and has to be browbeaten into attending a key union meeting by his pregnant wife, Ann Lynn.

Informed by a gossiping neighbour that Syms has been seen with Sekka, De Banzie becomes increasingly inquisitive and lets her daughter know of her disapproval in no uncertain terms. By contrast, Mills is more excited to discover she has been dating. But, even though he has helped chase away some white thugs attempting to disrupt the street's bonfire party and has made an impassioned speech on equality in securing Cameron's election, Mills also has misgivings when Syms reveals the identity of her beau. However, while De Banzie curses her, Mills offers his support on the understanding that the couple genuinely love each other and are aware of the prejudice they are bound to face from each side of the racial divide.

Ultimately, Mills and Sekka forge a bond in adversity, as they get caught up in a showdown  between angry gangs of black and white youths. But it takes Cameron to be badly burned and Mills to use all his persuasive powers before he can convince De Banzie even to contemplate
accepting Syms's choice.

Despite striving for the gritty tone that had dominated British cinema since the kitchen sink boom started in 1958, this rather melodramatic saga has never been included among the key works of social realism. The political stance is laudable and Baker uses Alex Vetchinsky's sets and Christopher Challis's CinemaScope imagery to reinforce its trenchancy. But, notwithstanding De Banzie's staunch efforts, the film pulls the same punches that Stanley Kramer would pull in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), as Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn overcome their doubts to accept daughter Katherine Houghton's engagement to another socially acceptable and professionally successful black man in Sidney Poitier. Moreover, the strife between Cameron and Lynn also seems a little strained, especially as West Indian reticence to impose themselves on their adopted country had begun to dissipate by 1961.

Dismissed by some critics at the time as platitudinous, the statements contained in Willis's screenplay were worth making then and are equally worth heeding half a century later, even though the issue of mixed-race relationships is markedly less contentious. The recent incidences of racial abuse in the Premier League depressingly confirm the continued existence of bigotry. Thus, while Willis, Baker and their cast can be accused of trying too hard to make a point (and, thereby, a difference), their good intentions should not be doubted and it is worth noting that echoes of their concerns still reverberate around the majority of British urban crime and social problem pictures today.

Although he was small in stature, Mills had always been considered a screen action man. Following his magnificent performance in Scott of the Antarctic (1948), he had been the first choice to team with Bette Davis in The African Queen (1951) and he reinforced his resourceful image in Disney's version of Johann Wyss's The Swiss Family Robinson (1960). But he could also play the curmudgeonly villain, as he proved as the psychologically scarred commanding officer in Ronald Neame's military drama Tunes of Glory (1960). And he essays a similarly damaged individual in Ted Kotcheff's directorial debut, Tiara Tahiti (1962), a barbed comedy that was adapted from his own novel by Geoffrey Cotterell.

Prior to the Second World War, Mills was a clerk at a brokerage company owned by James Mason's family. However, he manages to rise through the ranks and is a lieutenant colonel by the time Captain Mason is assigned to his unit in an almost defeated Germany. Terrified that Mason will betray his lowly origins and furious at his instant popularity with comrades like Roy Kinnear and Peter Barkworth, Mills presses charges when he discovers Mason has been smuggling black market goods back to Blighty.

Undaunted by his dishonourable discharge and being disinherited by his family, Mason heads to Tahiti, where he lives off his wits and keeps the right side of local gendarme Jacques Marin by offering constructive criticism of his latest novel. He also shacks up with Rosenda Monteros, who hopes Mason will take her to Europe so she can become a fashion model, although she also flirts with hunky American sailor Gary Cockrell and Chinese merchant Herbert Lom, who provides her with free clothes.

All seems precariously idyllic until Mills arrives on the island to scout a site for a new hotel and Mason joins forces with French bigwig Claude Dauphin to thwart his plans and gain his revenge, With garrulous Americans Madge Ryan and Libby Morris convincing everyone that tourists would be a disaster, Mason plays on Mills's lingering resentment and growing insecurity, as he fears exposure for basing his new business persona on that of his nemesis. But, after Mills drunkenly confesses to ruining Mason's army career, the pair come to blows and Mason allows the authorities to deport Mills under the mistaken impression that he had attempted to throttle him when the real culprit was Lom's muscular sidekick.

Even without the evidence of this entertaining outing, it's mystifying that Mills and Mason only made one movie together. With his self-deprecating sense of stiff rectitude, the former would have been the perfect foil for the latter, whose caddish charm somehow always managed to be appealing, even at its most dastardly. Yet, while neither is quite at his best here, they spa splendidly in both battle and paradise. Moreover, they are ably abetted by a solid cast (although the Orientalising of the Czech-born Lom is highly regrettable) and some sprightly direction by Kotcheff, who would go on to make Canada's first global hit, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1974). But the plot is always a tad predictable (in some ways it feels like a variation on Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana) , while its comments on the class system get lost in the bantering buffoonery.

The final film of the Mills set makes a neat link to the star of the second collection under review this week, as Dirk Bogarde provides his adversary in Roy Ward Baker's The Singer Not the Song (1961). If everyone connected with this psychological Western had had their way, Mills would have been paired with Marlon Brando under the direction of Luis Buñuel. But, instead, Baker and Bogarde had to endure a project they equally despised and which the latter always claimed he tried to subvert by playing up a homoerotic subtext that seems as readily apparent to modern eyes as ears familiar with Ennio Morricone's Spaghetti Western compositions will be attuned to the teasing traces in Philip Green's splendidly spare motif-strewn score. Regarded more as a cult curio than a genuine classic, this variation on Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory makes for fascinating viewing 50 years after it proved a resounded commercial flop.

On arriving in the remote Mexican town of Quantano, Father John Mills is warned by parishioner Mylène Demongeot that atheistic bandit Dirk Bogarde is so anti-clerical that he has allowed the church to fall into disrepair and intimidates those who wish to practice their faith in peace. Outgoing priest Leslie French confirms that Bogarde began killing townsfolk in alphabetical order when he sought to convert him. But Mills refuses to be ruffled and, when only three elderly matrons come to mass, he confronts police captain John Bentley and Demongeot's wealthy father, Roger Delgado, who betray that they are powerless to resist Bogarde and his gang.

Determined to bring the Good News to this benighted place, Mills tries preaching in the main square. But Bogarde is so piqued by his insolence that he announces a resumption of his alphabetical slaughter. When a child dies as a consequence, Mills tries to negotiate with Bogarde, whose fondness for the priest proves his undoing, as he loses the respect of the locals by shooting old timer Laurence Naismith as he attempts to murder Mills.

Following a year-long exile, Bogarde returns to Quantano and is allowed to stay on the proviso he takes religious instruction. However, Demongeot's mother finds love letters she thinks have been sent to Bogarde and pleads with Mills to break the romance. In fact, Bogarde realises that Mills was the intended recipient of the never-mailed missives and, when Demongeot agrees to go to Florida to allow her ardour to cool, Bogarde tries to blackmail Mills into allowing him to regain control of the town.

But, even though Demongeot seems to throw herself on Bogarde rather than marry American Philip Gilbert, Mills refuses to bow to pressure. Indeed, he uses a fiery sermon to denounce Bogarde and the congregation is suitably empowered to arrest him. However, the outlaw is wounded as he tries to escape and Mills is gunned down by one of his acolytes as he kneels beside him in a desperate bid to secure a last-gasp conversion.

The fact that the dying Bogarde claims to have always been more interested in the singer (ie Mills) than the song (his message) makes it pretty clear that this is what nowadays would be called a `bromance'. Bogarde may be dressed in villainous black, but nobody wore such skin-tight leather trousers in a John Wayne Western and would certainly never do so in a Clint Eastwood oater. Nevertheless, it is tempting to see in Otto Heller's widescreen vistas a hint of the visual bravura and dramatic intensity that Sergio Leone would make his own with the `Dollars' trilogy.

Few British actors enjoyed a career of such distinctive contrasts as Dirk Bogarde (1921-99). Having essayed his share of Achilles-heeled delinquents, he spent much of the 1950s as the pin-up boy of the Rank Organisation, with his performances as Simon Sparrow in the popular Doctor series endearing him to mothers and daughters alike. Away from the screen, however, Bogarde had little in common with this clean-cut image and, having shattered the myth in landmark dramas like Basil Dearden's Victim (1961) and Joseph Losey's The Servant (1963), he became more associated with arthouse pictures that frequently tackled topics once considered taboo.

The titles in this Great British Actors selection come from the Pinewood heyday, with Ian Dalrymple and Peter Proud's adaptation of George Moore's 1894 novel Esther Waters (1948) affording the young Bogarde one of his first romantic leads. Promoted from a supporting role after Stewart Grainger baled on the project, Bogarde seemed to base his performance on those given by James Mason in the bodice-rippers produced by Gainsborough Studios in the immediate postwar period. However, by more than holding his own against a cast of fine character actors, he emerged as a star in his own right. Moreover, given the scurrilous nature of Moore's earlier works, A Modern Lover (1883) and A Mummers Wife (1885), he set a trend for associating himself with provocative artists that would continue through to his final feature in 1990.

Irish actress Kathleen Ryan takes the title role, as the pious kitchen maid employed at the Woodview horse-breeding estate owned by Squire Julian D'Albie and his wife Fay Compton (who was, incidentally, the mother of Anthony Pélissier). She works hard alongside fellow servants Margaret Diamond, Shelagh Fraser and Ivor Barnard, but her head is turned by dashing footman Dirk Bogarde, who gets her pregnant before revealing that he is also having an affair with D'Albie's niece, Mary Clare.

Despite having Compton's sympathy, Ryan goes to London, where she has her child and has to take any job she can find in order to provide for him. She even works as a wet nurse for unscrupulous baby trafficker Beryl Measor. Bogarde, meanwhile, has been abandoned by Clare and has opened a tavern in Soho, where he spends his time frittering his money on horse races. But, even though the kindly Cyril Cusack seems to offer Ryan the kind of respectable home she has always craved, she is unable to resist when Bogarde proposes they marry.

Reneging on all his promises to reform, Bogarde continue to operate an illegal gambling racket from an upper room in his pub for such shifty regulars as George Hayes and Morland Graham. Cusack tries to keep an eye on Ryan and Bernard even visits from Woodview, as does Diamond, who has fallen on hard times and needs protection from her vicious beau. But, even though Bogarde has his licence revoked by the police, he continues to believe he can land a big pay day and wastes the last of his savings on a rank outsider before succumbing to tuberculosis.

Destitute, Ryan makes her way back to Woodview, where Compton is happy to offer her a place. Cusack comes to find her and again offers to become her protector. But Ryan feels her first duty lies in giving her son the love her travails have denied him and the action concludes with a cosy twist on the conventional happy ending.

Owing as much to the 1911 and 1922 stage versions as to the novel itself, Esther Waters always feels like a story that has been trimmed to suit a running time. Several characters excised from the London chapters were restored for a 1977 BBC adaptation and they are sorely missed in a rushed overview of Ryan's struggle to provide for her son and keep out of the workhouse. It doesn't help that Ryan (in only her third film) often seems simpering rather than tenacious or that the usually reliable Cusack is so lightweight as her potential saviour.

Bogarde, on the other hand, is magnificently mean and moody and the picture comes alive when he is on the screen. Unfortunately, the plot dispenses with him for lengthy periods and it rather peters out after he gets his just desserts. Making only his third feature after many years working as an editor, screenwriter and producer, Dalrymple directs steadily (Peter Proud, an art director who also produced for his own Wessex Film company, seems to have been credited as co-director out of courtesy). But, while the racecourse sequences are suitably evocative, the censor prevented the exploration of the narrative's darker themes and, consequently, this is a rather tame abridgement of a rousing tome by a novelist who provided a vital link between the realism of Emile Zola and the stream of consciousness of James Joyce and who has since only occasionally returned to the screen courtesy of such pictures as Albert Nobbs (2011), which was directed by Rodrigo García, whose father is the Nobel prize-winning author Gabriel García Marquez.

Bogarde, Cusack and Dalrymple (this time wearing a producer's hat) joined forces later the same year for Jack Lee's Once a Jolly Swagman (1948), a speedway saga that has all the authenticity one would expect of a director who started out in documentaries. However, there is no escaping the melodramatic inevitability of a storyline that is packed with all the pitfalls one expects to land in the path of an overnight sensation whose success goes straight to his ego. Taking its title from the Australian anthem `Waltzing Matilda', this was released in the United States under the hilarious title Maniacs on Wheels. But it is no more successful in capturing the perils of the track than the Elvis Presley wall of death movie Roustabout (1964) or David Essex's homage to Barry Sheene, Silver Dream Racer (1980).

Some time in the 1930s, factory worker Dirk Bogarde risks the ire of parents James Hayter and Thora Hird by quitting his job to try his hand at speedway riding. Cobra Speedway promoter Sidney James has noticed his talent and offers him a chance to ride in a novice race, which Bogarde wins with ease. He buddies up with Aussie ace Bill Owen. But success comes too easily for him and he becomes increasingly arrogant, especially after he starts a romance with socialite Moira Lister that crushes Owen's adoring sister, Renee Asherson, who fears Bogarde is going to come a cropper.

Even when Owen is seriously injured after a spill, Bogarde remains reckless. But he tires of Lister and her snooty crowd and not only marries Asherson, but also campaigns for a union to support riders who lose either their lives or the livelihoods on the track. But he is tempted to try his luck in the United States by Bonar Colleano and Asherson leaves him, as she wants to settle down, open a garage and start a family. The outbreak of war changes everybody's plans, however, and Bogarde does his bit as a dispatch rider. He also takes some sound advice from old pal Cyril Cusack, as he wonders whether to return to Asherson or to the track.

Although the domestic drama is more than a little formulaic, Lee captures the thrill of the speedway circuit by having cinematographer HE `Chick' Fowle (who was one of the cameramen on the seminal 1936 steam train documentary, Night Mail) mount a camera on the front of a bike to produce some hair-raising point-of-view shots. A few sparks also fly between Bogarde and Lister and Asherson. But this works best as a bloke's picture, as Bogarde banters with Owen, James and Colleano (who would be tragically killed a decade later at the age of 34 in a car crash in Birkenhead). Lee (who was the younger brother of Cider With Rosie author, Laurie Lee) would repeat the trick two years later with the POW classic, The Wooden Horse, while screenwriter William Rose would do much better when he returned to horse-powered stories with the vintage car gem Genevieve in 1953.

Ever since Alexander Korda and his brother Zoltan started producing pictures set in Africa and the Raj in the 1930s, British film-makers had been tempted by the lure of the Empire. Yet J. Arthur Rank had largely avoided such exotic excursions, as much because of the costs involved as any misgivings about the patronising depiction of the colonised. But the unexpected commercial success of Ken Annakin's Malaysian saga The Planter's Wife (1952) changed minds in the Pinewood front office and an opportunistic story department drone named Anthony Perry submitted an outline about the Mau Mau rising in Kenya that convinced producer Earl St John to dispatch a second unit to East Africa to shoot the back projection footage that would add a little authentic colour to Brian Desmond Hurst's Simba (1955), a potboiler that can now only be viewed as a dismaying insight into contemporary attitudes to Britain's overseas territories and their occupants.

Dirk Bogarde is less than thrilled by the prospect of helping his brother maintain his Kenyan farm, but he cheers up on being reunited with childhood sweetheart Virginia McKenna at the airport. His mood darkens quickly, however, when he discovers that his sibling has been slaughtered by a Mau Mau rebel and his latent prejudice boils to the surface when Inspector Donald Sinden informs him there is little hope of catching the culprit.

Determined to sell up and return home, Bogarde cautions McKenna and her parents Basil Sidney and Marie Ney about placing too much faith in Earl Cameron, a British-educated doctor whose father (Orlando Martins) is the chief of the local tribe. Moreover, he openly advocates the brutal suppression of the Mau Mau, especially after he is attacked in his brother's house and he suspects the houseboys of complicity.

However, Sinden remains powerless to clamp down on the rebels and an attempted round-up merely reveals that Martins is actually their leader. Cameron fears arrests and escapes into the forest. But he emerges in time to prevent his father from butchering Bogarde and McKenna, only to pay with his own life at the hands of his machete-wielding compatriots.

Just last week, we reviewed the Paul Robeson vehicle Jericho (1937) in this column and it's perturbing to note that British film-makers had seemingly learned nothing in the intervening 18 years about the depiction of black characters. They were usually willing to concede that there could be one civilising influence, providing he (and it was always a he) had been schooled in the old country and taken up a vocational profession with the intention of improving the lot of his less noble brethren. But the bigotry that was denounced in films like Sapphire and Flame in the Streets was allowed to pervade unchecked pictures like Simba, in which the imperilled settlers were the heroes and no attempt was made whatsoever to examine the treatment of the Kikuyu or the policies of political parties like the Kenyan African Union, whose president, Jomo Kenyatta, had been imprisoned two years earlier.

Given the shameful circumstances in which this overwrought embarrassment was made, a discussion of its cinematic qualities seems almost irrelevant. But Geoffrey Unsworth's 2nd unit cinematography is striking, while Earl Cameron delivers a performance of imposing dignity that contrasts sharply with Bogarde's boorish petulance and the simpering goodiness of McKenna's nurse, whose admiration for Cameron and compassion for her patients are supplanted by her growing feelings for one of the most reprehensible heroes in 1950s British cinema.

Sadly, Bogarde's major is no more enlightened in Ralph Thomas's The High Bright Sun (1964). Adapted from a novel by Ian Stuart Black and set against the EOKA paramilitary campaign on the island of Cyprus, this is another Rank colonial melodrama to view with a profound sense of chagrin. Moreover, it was an undistinguished way for Bogarde to end his decade-long, nine-film association with director Ralph Thomas and producer Betty Box, who had made him a household name with the Doctor series. But one only has to compare this politically dubious effort with Joseph Losey's King and Country, which had been released earlier the same year, to see how out of kilter it seemed with its rapidly changing times.

American archaeology student Susan Strasberg arrives on Cyprus in 1957 to stay with family friend Joseph Furst and his wife Katherine Kath. Shortly afterwards, however, she witnesses the killing of two British soldiers by EOKA gunmen and frustrates newly appointed intelligence officer Dirk Bogarde by being unable to identify them. He is trying to track down rebel general Grégoire Aslan and Strasberg promises not to betray his whereabouts when she discovers him hiding in Furst's home.

Hothead George Chakiris disbelieves Strasberg's protestations of neutrality and attempts to assassinate her en route to the airport. She is saved by Furst's son, Colin Campbell, who dies in the ambush and Bogarde risks the ire of the British authorities by hiding Strasberg in his apartment. Eventually, however, Chakiris tracks her down and his second attempt to eliminate her is thwarted with the help of Denholm Elliott, a colleague of Bogarde's who had earned his enmity by having an affair with his wife.

Transferred in disgrace to Greece for harbouring a fugitive, Bogarde suggests Strasberg would be safer in Athens. But Chakiris books himself on the same flight and Elliott sacrifices himself to deliver her to Bogarde, who kills the fanatic with the icy calm of a British officer and gentleman.

As was often the case throughout his career, the splendid Denholm Elliott steals the show and it is refreshing to see his bounder accorded a rare hint of decency. It is also intriguing to study the contrasting acting styles of the homegrown cast with those of the Method-tutored Strasberg and the studio-groomed Chakiris. Naturally, Bogarde more than holds his own. But his boredom with a role lacking both psychological complexity and a necessary ruthless streak is as manifestly clear as his disinterest in Strasberg. However, while Black and his uncredited scripting partner Bryan Forbes insultingly simplify a precarious situation (and almost avoid mention of the Turkish population altogether), they do slip in an amusing subplot about a mysterious stranger who turns out to be a private detective snooping on Bogarde on behalf of his wife to gather evidence for her divorce plea.

Common to the Bogarde showcase and the British Film Noir set is Terence Fisher and Antony Darnborough's So Long At the Fair (1950). However, Dirk devotees can see more of their idol in Charles Crichton's Hunted (1952), which is joined in a serviceable selection by Basil Dean's 21 Days (1937), Jack Lee's Turn the Key Softly (1953) and Basil Dearden's aforementioned Sapphire.

Adapted from a novel by Anthony Thorne, So Long At the Fair (1950) opens in 1889 with siblings Jean Simmons and David Tomlinson arriving in Paris to visit the Exposition Universelle. Following a pleasant evening at the Moulin Rouge, Simmons goes to her room and leaves Tomlinson to enjoy a night cap. He is asked for the loan of 50 francs to pay a cab by artist Dirk Bogarde, who had been dropping sweetheart Honor Blackman and her mother Betty Warren at their hotel and Bogarde takes Tomlinson's name and room number so he can repay him the next day.

When Simmons wakes, however, she discovers that her brother's room has simply disappeared, with the doorway being replaced by a solid wall. Moreover, there is no sign of his name in the register and owner Cathleen Nesbitt's insistence that Simmons arrived alone is backed up by her brother Marcel Pontin and day porter Eugene Deckers. Distraught and afraid, Simmons pays a call on British consul Felix Aylmer and they dash across the city together to meet with maid Zena Marshall, who could provide proof of Tomlinson's existence. Tragically, however, she is killed in a ballooning accident and Simmons is close to despair when she fails to persuade police commissionaire Austin Trevor that Nesbitt and her staff are lying.

Simmons is due to leave the next morning and is relieved, therefore, when Blackman slips a note from Bogarde under her door repaying his debt and thanking Tomlinson for his kindness. Next day, Simmons pays a call on Bogarde who offers to assist her. He notices that there are six balconies on the outside of the hotel, but only five rooms on that floor and browbeats Nesbitt into confessing that the room had been covered up because Tomlinson had been taken ill in the night with the Black Plague and had been whisked off to a secret clinic before the press and public could get wind of a disease that would have spent financial ruin for the Exposition.

As the action closes, doctor André Morell reassures Simmons that Tomlinson will survive. But, in spite of the happy ending, this failed to make much of an impression at the domestic box-office. It proved to be a watershed assignment for both Simmons and Bogarde, however. Respectively fresh from eye-catching supporting roles in Laurence Olivier's Hamlet (1948) and Basil Dearden's The Blue Lamp (1950), Simmons went on to marry Stewart Granger and become exclusively contracted to Hollywood tycoon Howard Hughes, while Bogarde was spotted by Betty Box, who considered him perfect for the role of Simon Sparrow in her forthcoming take on Richard Gordon's bestseller Doctor in the House.

Director Terence Fisher also benefited from the experience, as his grasp of period and the way in which he and cinematographer Reginald Wyer lit Cedric Dawe's sets must have impressed the good folk at Hammer, as he handled the initial entries in the horror cycle that transformed the company's fortunes. But things didn't change for everyone overnight and while Fisher toiled away on ITV's children's series The Adventures of Robin Hood, Bogarde moved back into hoodlum roles in Charles Crichton's Hunted.

Six year-old orphan Jon Whiteley has failed to settle since moving from Scotland to live in London with adoptive parents Kay Walsh and Frederick Piper, who mean well despite being overly strict. Thus, when Whiteley sets fire to some curtains, he runs away rather than face the consequences and takes shelter in a derelict house on an uncleared bomb site. Venturing into the basement, the boy sees sailor Dirk Bogarde standing over the body of the man he has killed for having an affair with his wife, Elizabeth Sellars. Realising he cannot let the only witness to his crime walk away, Bogarde senses Whiteley's unease and coaxes him into trusting him by promising to protect him as a fellow runaway.

Needing to get out of the capital, Bogarde decides to travel north and Whiteley is happy to be heading towards his homeland and kindly couple Jack Stewart and Jane Aird. But he doesn't entirely trust Bogarde, who quickly finds the lad a bit of a burden. Yet he doesn't have the heart to kill him and clearly keeps hoping that a plan will occur to him on the road. Things improve somewhat when Whiteley confesses the nature of his own crime and Bogarde discerns that he has been through the mill. However, Bogarde knows that Inspector Geoffrey Keen is on his trail and he tries to hurry the kid through the border country of Dumfries and Galloway.

Eventually, they reach the coast, where Bogarde steals a boat with the intention of crossing to Ireland. During the course of the voyage, however, Whiteley falls seriously ill and Bogarde has no option but to turn around and return to Portpatrick, where he knows Keen will be waiting for him.

Released Stateside as The Stranger in Between, this could easily have descended into sentimentality. But Charles Crichton cleverly plays up the sense of fear and mistrust between the fugitives, which forces Bogarde to treat Whiteley as an ally rather than a hostage, as he forever knows that a careless word could cost him his life. As one would expect of a director who started out as an editor, Crichton also paces the picture superbly. Moreover, he and cinematographer Eric Cross make evocative use of the passing countryside to emphasise the vulnerability of the duo as they never know what might lie around the next corner.

As Kevin Costner would do as the escaped convict befriending young TJ Lowther in Clint Eastwood's A Perfect World (1993), Bogarde consistently suggests the mix of menace and decency that had become a key component of the noir anti-hero's persona in postwar American cinema. But this remains a very British picture, with Whiteley's innocent having a Dickensian air, while the friendship forged in the course of a journey harks back to the picaresque tales told in the early days of the novel.

Among Crichton's earliest editorial assignments was Basil Dean's 21 Days (1937), an adaptation of John Galsworthy's play, The First and the Last, that marked Graham Greene's second outing as a screenwriter (following the John Mills vehicle, The Green Cockatoo, 1937). Already a respected novelist and a feisty critic for The Spectator and Night and Day magazine, Greene found the process of reworking a frankly melodramatic saga for the screen to be hugely frustrating. Moreover, he was aware from the moment the final draft was completed that his efforts were deeply flawed.

But what fatally undermined the production was the fact that co-stars Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh had just started the love affair that would lead them both to the divorce courts before they became the most famous married couple in British cinema. Indeed, Greene recalls that they were so blissfully happy around the set that their mood spilt over into scenes requiring considerably more gravitas. But neither Dean nor producer Alexander Korda felt capable of urging the lovebirds to forget their extracurricular dalliance and concentrate on the task at hand.

Olivier is the disgraced scion of a wealthy family, who has long been keeping company with Leigh, whose husband disappeared in mysterious circumstances. When Esme Percy arrives unexpectedly at Leigh's apartment, however, Olivier kills him to protect her and hides the body underneath a nearby backstreet archway. Aware that the police will not believe his story of self-defence, Olivier consults his lawyer brother, Leslie Banks, who advises that he leaves the country to avoid bringing shame on the family and scuppering his chances of becoming a judge.

While considering his options, Olivier returns to lane where he deposited Percy and bumps into defrocked parson Hay Petrie, who is struggling to find a reason to live after losing his reputation and his calling. He picks up a pair of gloves dropped by Olivier and absent-mindedly drops them in the street. Unfortunately, however, they are recovered and the combination of his fingerprints and Percy's blood leads to him being arrested for murder.

Realising that he cannot let an innocent man go to the gallows, Olivier tells Leigh that he will turn himself in before the start of Petrie's trial. But he suggests that they try to pack a lifetime of love and life into the next three weeks so that they will not have any regrets about the time they will lose. Thus, as Petrie endures anguish and humiliation before Lord Chief Justice William Dewhurst, Olivier and Leigh whoop it up in restaurants and nightclubs, as well as at the Southend funfair.

But Banks disapproves of the scheme and, on the day that Petrie is sentenced to hang, pleads with Olivier to keep quiet and allow justice to take its course. However, he knows he has to pay for his crime and is on the way to turn himself in when Leigh intercepts him on the police station steps to inform him that Petrie has died of a heart attack in his cell and that they are free.

It's easy to see why Olivier and Leigh found it so hard to concentrate, as this is a hoary tale that totters precariously on rickety clichés and caricatures before it comes crashing down under the weight of the climactic contrivance. The stars are wholly wasted in roles that could have been played with more conviction and credibility by younger actors. But it is still amusing trying to spot the telltale signs of the off-camera ecstasy that betray the fact that the doomed duo are being played by rich, beautiful celebrities without a care in the world. Having lamented that the censor prevented him from using such Galsworthyian gambits as a burnt confession and a double suicide, Greene had the decency to denounce himself in The Spectator for penning a work that reeked so strongly of `overcooked ham'. Indeed, he even vowed to stay away from the cinema for good. Fortunately, however, Korda persuaded him to renege on his promise and he scripted two of the finest British films of the 1940s in The Fallen Idol (1948) and The Third Man (1949).

Prison also plays its part in Jack Lee's Turn the Key Softly (1953), an adaptation of a novel by John Brophy that sought to explore the little discussed topic of female criminality. Despite its claims to present lowlife in all its shocking depravity, this has more in common with the Hollywood `woman's picture' than the social realism that was starting to appear in a handful of British stage productions. But the performances are admirable and there is the added bonus of a bystanding cameo by Richard Massingham, who became a familiar face during the war years in a series of comic public information films on such key topics as bath water levels and coughs and sneezes.

Yvonne Mitchell, Joan Collins and Kathleen Harrison leave Holloway Prison promising to meet up after their first 24 hours of freedom to see how they are coping. However, for all the good intentions to put the past behind them, all three women soon find themselves facing temptations and frustrations that could easily lead them back to the cells.

Despite coming from a monied background, Mitchell could never resist the thrill of danger and she not only fell into the arms of crook Terence Morgan, but also took the blame for a blag of his devising. Throughout her sentence, she planned her revenge. But the moment she sees him again, she succumbs to his hissable charms and soon becomes embroiled in another of his nefarious schemes.

Having been jailed for soliciting, Collins also returns to her old haunts and not even the dependable devotion of bus driver Glyn Houston can keep her fretting about the luxuries she would be able to afford if she just turned a few tricks. But the fate awaiting Harrison's habitual shopkeeper is the most heart-rending. Almost sneered at by daughter Hilda Fenemore, she returns to her shabby home and Johnny, the mongrel dog who alone is delighted to see her. However, the cupboard is bare and Harrison has only one option if she is to give her pet the slap-up meal his welcome deserves.

Ultimately, screenwriter Maurice Cowan settles for a cornball twist to tie the loose ends together. But there is a logic to the denouement and soap operas have ever since been reliant on such easy opt-outs. Lee directs steadily and draws effective contrasts between the differing milieux inhabited by women who would ordinarily never have met outside prison. He also makes the most of supporting turns by such stalwarts as Thora Hird, Geoffrey Keen and Dorothy Alison.

But this is all about the stellar triumvirate, with Collins allowing a rare vulnerability to show beneath her customary surface assurance, while Mitchell contributes another solid display of bourgeois fragility that made her turn as a slovenly housewife in J. Lee Thompson's recently reissued Woman in a Dressing Gown (1957) all the more impressive. However, it's Harrison who most impresses. Best known for providing semi-comic support to Jack Warner in the long-running Huggetts series, she captures the pain of rejection and loneliness without resorting to mawkishness and the scenes in which she revels in being back together with her pup are worth the odd tear.

Completing the set is one of the key collaborations between onetime Ealing director Basil Dearden and his regular producing partner Michael Relph, who explored some of the most pressing social issues of the postwar era in a series of problem pictures that were considered daring in their day for their frank depiction of topics that were usually either sugar-coated or ignored altogether. Although it followed the lead of Elia Kazan's 1949 adaptation of Cid Ricketts Sumner's novel Pinky in focused on a light-skinned black woman, Sapphire (1959) was one of the first UK screen dramas to discuss race relations. In retrospect, this may not have been as confrontational in its denunciation of prejudice as it might have been. But it remains one of the most enduringly important British dramas of its time.

When Scotland Yard superintendent Nigel Patrick is called to Hampstead Heath to investigate the multiple stabbing of a young woman identifiable only by her monogrammed handkerchief, he confides to inspector Michael Craig that the lack of blood at the scene suggests she was killed elsewhere and dumped in the undergrowth in the hope no one would find her. On discovering that the victim was student Yvonne Buckingham, Patrick is equally sceptical about the Cambridge alibi of her boyfriend Paul Massie, a promising architect who has just won a scholarship to a prestigious European university.

But things takes a decisive twist when Patrick meets Buckingham's brother, as he is black Birmingham doctor Earl Cameron, who reveals that his sister had lighter skin as their father had been a white doctor, while their mother was a black dancer. Patrick also discovers that Buckingham was three months pregnant when she died and he takes Craig to task for being so revolted by the miscegenist aspect of the case, as it emerges that Buckingham was leading a dual life in attempting to pass for white in polite circles, while also seeking out uncouth company in seedy clubs in the Caribbean quarter.

While one line of inquiry considers Buckingham's relationship with affluent black man Gordon Heath and her steamier assignations at the downmarket Tulip Club with Harry Baird, another centres on Massie and his family, who knew about Buckingham's condition and had begrudgingly consented to a marriage. However, the attitude towards the visiting Cameron of mother Olga Lindo, father Bernard Miles and sister Yvonne Mitchell convinces Patrick that they know more than they are letting on.

Although it contained a scene of Baird being beaten by a gang of Teddy Boys and reference is made to the internecine feud between Baird and gangster Robert Adams, what is most striking about this often harrowing whodunit are the shifts from casual racism to outbursts of bileful bigotry that expose the depth of feeling that still existed a decade on against those who had followed the first passengers leaving the West Indies aboard the Empire Windrush. Dearden had previously assessed this situation in Pool of London (1951), but he was keen to show that intolerance was a blight that infected the bourgeoisie as well as the working classes. He also highlighted the fact that a prosperous black middle class was also emerging and implies a hope for the future in the politeness of the small boy Cameron encounters on his scooter.

However, Janet Green's screenplay still betrays a certain prudishness, as Buckingham is presented as promiscuous rather than emancipated, while jazz (even when arranged by Johnny Dankworth) is equated with moral bankruptcy. Indeed, some contemporary critics castigated Dearden and Relph for failing to condemn racism rather than simply admitting its existence. They would be more convincing in denouncing homophobia in Victim (1961), but they are more comfortable here handling the police procedural and the various white milieux than they are capturing the reality of London's black neighbourhoods.