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"Have you ever been wicked, monsieur?" "At times." The boy waiting to confess might be the gentlemanly burglar (Guy Rolfe) as a beginner sinner, the alarm from a bank break-in cracks the silence of church. Following a handful of arrests, he's developed a peculiar cordiality toward his opposite number, the staid chief of police (Eric Portman) who sizes him up philosophically: "You have rejected your place in the world—and I hate untidiness." Between the two men is the comely accomplice (Nadia Gray), an alibi for one and a trap for the other, for herself a seductress and survivor. "A well-bred dog that's turned savage," the suave crook according to the inspector who prefers birdcages, larcenous skills that come in handy as the Great War breaks out. A cognac toast on the eve of cataclysm, "to crime." "To detection." A Gallic backdrop for British noir, an impeccable blurring of moral divides by Robert Hamer. Sirk's A Scandal in Paris is a source of style, the getaway in the gloom (with a quick handheld POV suspended between buildings) is emulated in Bresson's A Man Escaped. The narrative refreshes itself three quarters of the way in as an espionage thriller, nothing like a reward to resuscitate a scoundrel's heroism. "Can a department that makes thieves out of respectable policemen object to that?" Profession of robbery, absinthe of pursuit. Neutral terrain for impassive agents, the lawman can only cut loose when pretending to be drunk, the safecracker goes to work under the glaring gaze of the Kaiser's portrait. The coda hinges on cherchez la femme, "for melodrama's sake, let me see her." A striking resemblance to Ray's Bitter Victory is to be noted. With Edward Chapman, Maurice Denham, George Cole, May Hallatt, John Carol, James Hayter, John Salew, Harold Lang, and Arthur Lowe. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |