Locarno Film Festival’s yearly, rotating retrospective is almost always the best and surest ticket in town. Take last year’s Columbia 100 celebration, “The Lady With The Torch,” which showed 44 classics and rarities (mostly on film). This time around, the retrospective, curated by Ehsan Khoshbakht, looks across the pond toward postwar Britain.
Partnering with the BFI National Archive, which is celebrating its 90th anniversary this year, along with Cinémathèque suisse, with the support of Studiocanal, the programme promised 45 films derived from 1945 thru 1960, featuring directors like Carol Reed, David Lean, and Powell and Pressburger as well as stars such as James Mason, Dirk Bogart, and Maggie Smith. The series also featured several women directors, like Muriel Box, Wendy Toye, Margaret Tait, and Jill Craigie (full transparency: I arrived halfway through the festival, so I could only catch one woman filmmaker, though I highly recommend Margaret Tait’s “A Portrait of Ga,” which I’ve watched before and love).
There’s also a delightful and informative book, Great Expectations: British Postwar Cinema 1945-1960, that accompanied the retrospective, featuring essays by the programme’s curator Ehsan Khoshbakht, film historians Imogen Sara Smith, Pamela Hutchinson and Charles Barr, film critics Chris Fujiwara and Nick James, and BFI Senior Curator James Bell, as well as additional writing from Farran Smith, Phuong Le, Lilian Crawford, Elena Lazic, and more.
Of the 45 films that played in Locarno, I was fortunate enough to catch 14. The films I saw chronicled a wounded and shifting empire, one fundamentally reckoning with race, religion, class, gender norms, and the very destruction of the land itself, to both document and re-imagine a region that might rise again from the ashes of another world war. Here are the films that left me startled, perplexed, and awed.
‘Odd Man Out’ (1947)
A stone-cold classic, Carol Reed’s “Odd Man Out” is an enrapturing crisis of faith involving a manhunt whose prime suspect, IRA leader Johnny McQueen (James Mason), is unable to run. That’s because during a robbery gone wrong, Johnny was both gravely wounded and flung from the side of his getaway car. Half delirious and profusely bleeding, Johnny stumbles from hiding place to hiding place, narrowly avoiding the police in the process. His devoted partner Kathleen Sullivan (an earnest Kathleen Ryan) searches the streets for him before turning to Father Tom (WG Fay) for information. Throughout Reed’s muscular film, whose citywide canvas mirrors his greatest triumph, “The Third Man,” the subject of faith often arises. Will Kathleen murder herself to be with Johnny? Is Johnny wandering purgatory toward salvation? Mason, for his part, delivers a sermon filled with so much regret, you can literally see a line of spit falling from his lips.
‘Brighton Rock’ (1948)
Like “Odd Man Out,” “Brighton Rock,” based on the same-titled Graham Greene novel, examines Catholicism within a crime milieu. The protagonist of this film, Pinkie Brown (Richard Attenborough), however, isn’t as high-minded as James Mason’s Johnny McQueen. Pinkie is a killer. He leads a small outfit caught in a turf war against a local Italian mobster (Charles Goldner) and also murders Fred (Alan Wheatley), a former friend who might’ve ratted him out, at Brighton Beach. To cover his tracks, he woos the only witness who could implicate him, a smitten Rose (Carol Marsh). The topic of suicide also comes up here, as does the subject of damnation. Pinkie certainly deserves the latter; Attenborough arrestingly plays him as a cowardly and manipulative animal deserving of death. By the end, everyone turns on Pinkie, except for one, inspiring a final grace note that suggests a kind of purgatory.
‘The Three Weird Sisters’ (1948)
An oddball Gothic melodrama, adapted by Dylan Thomas, David Evans, and Louise Birt from Charlotte Armstrong’s novel “The Case of the Weird Sisters,” Daniel Birt’s picture is a tonally unstable work. After a nearly worked-out coal mine belonging to the Morgan-Vaughan family collapses, destroying several cottages, the three heiresses: the blind Gertrude (Nancy Price), the arthritic Maude (Mary Clare), and the deaf Isobel (Mary Merall)—promise to rebuild them. Despite their show of generosity, the siblings, however, do not have the money. Instead, they call on their wealthy half-brother Owen (Raymond Lovell), who brings his dutiful secretary Claire Prentiss (Nova Pilbeam), to return home. Owen’s indignant resistance to their plan, he’d rather the dying town sink into the ground, makes him a target of his sisters, who soon begin scheming his murder. Maybe it’s British self-reliance or a desire to kill the feudal system, but the film quickly takes the stance that this small town does indeed deserve to die, which makes for a deeply unsympathetic watch. Still, the climactic ending, which I won’t spoil, does bring the house down.
‘The Happiest Days of Your Life’ (1950)
This genuinely hilarious farce, directed by Frank Launder, sees the boys’ school led by Wetherby Pond (Alastair Sim) thrown into disarray when a clerical error causes a girls’ school student body helmed by Miss Whitchurch (Margaret Rutherford) to move onto Pond’s campus. What happens is a million gags a minute battle of the sexes that pits the careerist misogynist Pond against the undeterred Whitchurch, who’s afraid of losing her students when their parents discover the mistake. Sim is simply splendid, fashioning a tiny man whose major ego is put in its place by an equally effective Rutherford. While the film does halfheartedly try to inject romance into the picture via two young teachers (played by John Bentley and Bernadette O’Farrell), Joyce Grenfell as the tall, foolish Miss Gossage, nearly runs away with the movie. She has the best readings, the best reactions, and the best relationship with the camera, pushing a side character to the very center.
‘Pool of London’ (1951)
The only film in the retrospective starring a Black actor, Basil Dearden’s “Pool of London,” is an exceptionally crafted crime flick. It features two threads that begin to part when the merchant ship the Dunbar docks in London, causing its crew to disperse on a three-day pass. Best friends Dan MacDonald (Bonar Colleano) and Johnny Lambert (Earl Cameron) part for much of the weekend: Dan works to avoid authorities after a diamond heist gone wrong leaves him holding the bag, while Johnny strikes up a quiet romance with Pat (Susan Shaw). Like many of the films on this list, much of “Pool of London” was shot on location, thereby showing a crumbling London landscape still scarred by the Blitz. It also gets deep into the racial dynamics of the era with uncommon frankness. I won’t say too much about the movie, mostly because I have a major piece that puts the film into context with other interracial movie romances, but when Dan and Johnny begin to thread together again, it leads to an ending that is still surprisingly progressive today.
‘Hunted’ (1952)
The first of two Dirk Bogart performances on this list might be his best. It begins with a startling montage of a child named Robbie (Jon Whiteley) sprinting through a bustling street around cars and buses toward the basement of a bombed-out building and into the arms of Chris (Bogart). An infuriated Chris quickly whisks Robbie away, only for the camera to pull back, revealing a dead body strewn across battered bricks. The film never explains why or how Robbie and Chris know each other, only that Robbie is an orphan parented by an abusive couple and that he likes playing with matches. Still, the pair flees across the muddy English countryside through the rainy Scottish hills to evade capture in an emotionally intense film that rarely pauses long enough for the viewer to breathe. Bogart is wonderfully sweet and raw here, and Whiteley gives an all-time great child performance. Director Charles Crichton, who was later nominated for two Academy Awards, for directing the brilliant screwball comedy “A Fish Called Wanda” (1988) a personal and professional breakthrough. “Hunted” won the Golden Leopard at Locarno in 1952.
‘Whispering Smith Hits London’ (1952)
Director Francis Searle’s American Western meets British detective story might be the weakest film on this list. It’s nothing more than a standard programmer, albeit an effectively made one. It concerns the noirish PI Whispering Smith (Richard Carlson), who, upon arriving in London for vacation, is hired by Anne Carter (Rona Anderson) to investigate the presumed suicide of her wealthy boss’s socialite daughter, Sylvia Garde. Along the way, Smith meets a rogue’s gallery of suspects: an off-kilter puppeteer (Herbert Lom), Sylvia’s affluent lawyer (Alan Wheatley), and her femme fatale best friend Louise (Greta Gynt). Nothing much unexpected happens—we can see the twist from a mile away, and we can see Anne and Smith falling for each other from even further—and the off-kilter hijinks that do happen are quickly forgotten about, like the psychiatric hospital Smith breaks into that’s illegally committing people. It’s all a bit too standard for what’s on paper, a fun premise.
‘The Stranger Left No Card’ (1952)
From the moment John Smith (Alan Badel) steps off the train, his grim plan is in full effect. Dressed in a black top hat, a florid waistcoat, and a ragged overcoat, he appears to be an eccentric man from a different era. In Wendy Toye’s dark, whimsical short, he bandies about town, playing tricks on stiffs and entertaining children. While Smith narrates his inner thoughts, including teasing his larger goal, he keeps his intentions relatively close to the vest. Once he does reveal his aim, he does so with a speech explaining how “they thought I was funny, very peculiar, but quite harmless.” In demonstrating how he managed to bring everyone over to his nefarious side, Smith, in some way, provides an autopsy of how a world war began.
‘Cast a Dark Shadow’ (1955)
One of my personal discoveries—this noir isn’t unknown to fans of the genre—is Lewis Gilbert’s tantalizingly acidic “Cast a Dark Shadow.” Dirk Bogart stars as the sniveling gold digger Edward “Teddy” Bare, a man who, after committing a perfectly staged murder of his wealthy wife Monica (Mona Washbourne), discovers she’s only left him a house, and goes searching for his next score. Desperate for more cash, he weds the brassy widow Fredda Jeffries (Margaret Lockwood), who also rose from the lower/working-class by marrying an older, rich husband.
Although it could be accused of misstepping by comedically punching down at the servant class, this is a film that is uniquely aware of class. Without knowing Fredda’s backstory, for instance, we know the loneliness she must have experienced being a fish out of water in a sea of suspicious upper-class people. It’s why she’s alone in a sad bandshell when she and Teddy first meet. Class also comes up again when Teddy sets his sights on a wealthy Charlotte Young (Kay Walsh), who seemingly falls for Teddy’s cloying charms. Amidst acutely composed frames and alluring shadows are characters who know each other’s angles precisely because of their class. That tension makes a work whose machinations are deliciously enthralling to follow.
‘The Flying Scot’ (1957)
A bravura opening scene ignites Compton Bennett’s immersive heist flick: four criminals with great speed, efficiency, and cunning enact a plan whereby two of them pose as a married couple staying in a reserved stateroom, awaiting another robber who will help them remove a seat, accessing an adjoining room filled with money bags. The fourth man waits below the tracks for the trio to drop the bags to him, whisking them to safety. All of this happens in silence. It’s a perfect plan, one that so far only exists in Ronnie’s (Lee Patterson) head. He and his gang have completed six robberies, and this one, which promises half a million pounds, is their biggest one yet. The best laid plan, however, does indeed go awry. Everything from an annoying kid to a fall-down drunk disrupts them, causing Ronnie’s girl Jackie (a sharpened Kay Callard) to often take over as the trio hurtles through a heist that’s anything but meticulous.
‘Hell Drivers’ (1957)
Similar to the United States, Britain was also making grittier pictures that reflected the grim losses from World War II. Directed by Cy Endfield, “Hell Drivers” follows Tim Yately (Stanley Baker), a fresh out of prison driver who takes a job hauling gravel at a nefarious company that cuts corners and ups speeds. Yately, for the most part, can deal with those hazards. That is, as long as he doesn’t cross a tyrannical Red (Patrick McGoohan), the fastest, dirtiest, and meanest driver among the ragtag band of fools. Though Enfield made a name for himself in Hollywood directing mid-budget gems like “The Argyle Secrets” (1948) and “The Sound of Fury” (1950), by 195,1 he was blacklisted by HUAC. So, he moved to England, where his career found some traction again. Similar to “Wages of Fear” (1953), “Hell Drivers” critiques the exploitation of workers. It also features a young Sean Connery to go along with a towering Stanley Baker, who always looks like he can’t wait to punch up some trouble.
‘Nowhere to Go’ (1958)
During its postwar run, Ealing Studios became known as a comedy studio, producing such classics as Whisky Galore! (1949) and “Passport to Pimlico” (1949). (Both films also played as part of Locarno’s retrospective.) But Seth Holt’s paranoid noir is something altogether different. Produced by the studio in 1958, as part of its MGM partnership, the film follows recently escaped Canadian thief Paul Gregory (George Nader), who was imprisoned for tricking an elderly heiress out of her coin fortune, now on the loose again. Because the authorities never recovered his loot—he had stashed it in a safety deposit box—Gregory knows he has a golden parachute waiting for him. He just needs to get to it. That proves difficult when everyone begins turning on him, everyone except for a wealthy ex-débutante (Maggie Smith). The pair flees to Wales. The film’s bleak, jazz-infused score is later betrayed by its austere switch to classical music. But Smith, in particular, is excellent, adding an edge of humanity to a cold and cruel story.
‘I’m All Right Jack’ (1959)
An intentionally politically messy movie, John Boulting’s stinging satire wants to burn the whole system down by taking aim at the new Britain emerging after the war. An aristocratic Stanley Windrush (Ian Carmichael) is sorta the film’s protagonist—it’s not altogether clear if the movie actually likes him—when, after several failed attempts at breaking into the executive level at a plethora of companies, he’s persuaded by his former army comrade Sidney DeVere Cox (a devilish Richard Attenborough) and his uncle Bertram Tracepurcel (Dennis Price) to take a blue-collar job at his uncle’s missile manufacturing company.
Windrush is a total failure whose journey teases the sexual openness of the 1960s (a nudist colony is depicted here), shows how power can corrupt unions (Peter Sellers soars as the film’s talkative Leninist union leader), and depicts the underhanded partnerships between weapons manufacturers and foreign interests. Through all of this, the dimwitted Windrush becomes a figurehead for a mob whose own politics are superficially led by a cult of personality. The film’s chaotic ending anticipates Peter Finch in “Network” (1976), showing how television is in cahoots with the whole rotten system. In many ways, “I’m All Right Jack” is the most modern film in the retrospective.
‘Hell is a City’ (1960)
Another Stanley Baker joint, “Hell is a City” is a hard-nosed police procedural set in a gloomy Manchester. With an air of machismo, Baker plays Inspector Harry Martineau, a cop whose manic nemesis Don Sterling (John Crawford) is not only out of prison. He’s also pulled off a heist that involved dumping a young woman’s body in the moors. Though “Hell is a City” predates the infamous Moors murders, carried out by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, it’s difficult to watch the film without having the grisly crimes in the back of your head. So, as Sterling begins to careen across Manchester with the murderous anger of a rattlesnake, the unshakable Martineau’s dogged pursuit is granted historical weight. “Hell is a City” also offers a fascinating subplot involving Martineau’s wife, who doesn’t want to have children despite Martineau’s protests that having kids will help her feel useful. It’s unclear if the film knows just how misogynistic it is, but its messy gender dynamics certainly paint a picture of the rigid gender normativity of the era.
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