They Made Me a Fugitive (aka I Became a Criminal) (DVD)(1947)

Alberto Cavalcanti (Nicholas Nickleby, Dead of Night), one of the key figures in French and British cinema for several decades, turns his sights on the London underworld in the engrossing BritNoir gangland drama They Made Me a Fugitive. Set in the unsettled postwar England where crime is on the upsurge, Fugitive is a suspenseful genre film which uses the picturesque Soho district as background to brilliant effect. The brooding and atmospheric cinematography of cameraman Otto Heller (Alfie, Funeral in Berlin) is in the noir visual tradition, while the film's authenticity is due to the director's command of documentary technique,. The London pubs, alleys and back bedrooms turn into the poetry of urban realism. Also evident is Cavalcanti's deep understanding of the troubled characters, well drawn in the script by noted playwright Noel Langley, the screenwriter of the Wizard of OZ. Trevor Howard (Brief Encounter, the Third Man) gives one of his greatest performances as Clem, an ex-serviceman who is fed up after the War and drawn to the excitement of black-marketeering. His psychopathic sadistic gang boss, Narcy (Griffith Jones), betrays him when he refuses to deal in drugs, and the story becomes a breathtaking tale of revenge. The complex ending of They Made Me a Fugitive.