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While film noir has now become a fashionable subject for dissertations and several (very good and very useful) book-length surveys and studies, virtually all writing on the subject seems to follow the dictates of the French critics who coined the term and were decidedly arbitrary in pinning it down to a period and a country, namely America. Actually, as in all genres and schools of film-making, it exists all over the world-in France, Germany and the Scandinavian countries in particular – and its roots can be traced well back into the pre-war period, extending far beyond the 1940-1958 boundaries so often set down.

British film noir is particularly fascinating, not only because it has never been officially acknowledged to exist, but because its peak period parallels that of American noir, but does so with several major differences, the key one being that it has always been influenced by the French cinema of the 30’s rather than the German cinema of the 20’s.

While I don’t deny the possibility of the rediscovery of one or two individual British silent features that provide noir characteristics to the same remarkable extent as D. W. Griffith’s 1914 THE ESCAPE, British noir actually has no real roots in either the silent period or the early 30’s. Certain Hitchcock films come close – MURDER (1930) and SABOTAGE (1936) in particular – there are too many other ingredients that prevent them from being wholly representative of that school. There are two basic reasons for the belated appearance of native noir in Britain. One is that the British industry was always cautious, and always essentially entertainment-oriented; down-beat films were constantly frowned on. (Films with tragic or unhappy endings weren’t uncommon, but that isn’t quite the same thing). Secondly, the best of noir seems to come out of the contemporary scene – and the British film censors (exercising their restraints before production as well as after) saw to it that films critical of the British way of life, or offering social or political protest, just didn’t get made. Thus Walter Greenwood’s powerful novel of life in the depression, Love on the Dole, was barred from the screen in the 30’s. It wasn’t made until 1941, when the publicity surrounding The Grapes of Wrath made it seem commercially viable for the British to bring out their equivalent. The censors were mollified because Britain was then at war, the depression was far behind them, and the film became “history” rather than “social protest.”

British films from and of the depression were unfailingly optimistic; while Hollywood was offering us I AM A FUGITIVE FROM A CHAIN GANG, Britain gave us Gracie Fields’ SING AS WE GO. (Good film though it is, it’s disconcerting to find it now regarded as the definitive British spokesfilm for the depression!)

British noir got under way tentatively in 1938 and 1939, virtually disappeared in the war years (appearing, camouflaged, to add stylistic bite to a few war films), reappeared with a vengeance in 1945, the first post-war year, and paralleled Hollywood in peaking in 1947 and 1948.

Most of them were the work of directors who had been studying film in the 1930’s, and who regarded-or had been taught to regard-the ”Golden Age” of French cinema of the mid to late 30’s as representing the peak of film art. German influence had remained in British cinema, but to a diminishing degree, and for new directors to be “inspired” by German technique during the Nazi period would have been unwise and unpatriotic. In Hollywood of course, where the leaders of the noir movement were the German emigré directors – Fritz Lang, Billy Wilder, John Brahm and Robert Siodmak – German visuals had been a part of Hollywood film grammar since the late 20’s and the horror cycle of the early 30’s, and these directors were adept at combining those visuals with a kind of naturalistic expressionism best illustrated by Siodmak’s CRISS CROSS (1949). So while Hollywood noir went its some- what nightmarish way, inspired by silent German films of fantasy and legend, British noir swerved off on a different tangent, influenced by French poetic realism (QUAI DES BRUMES, LE JOUR SE LEVE).

Apart from this initial stylistic difference, there were other ways in which British noir was to diverge from its Hollywood counterpart. Britain had fewer studios and made far less pictures, with as much stress on variety as possible. In Hollywood, at Universal alone, Robert Siodmak, composer Miklos Rosza, cinematographer Woody Bredell and such stars as Burt Lancaster and Yvonne de Carlo were under contract, and created a sense of familiarity and continuity in the many noir films they made. In Britain, the few craftsmen and players who specialized in noir were scattered, and rarely worked as a continuing unit, al- though there was a certain amount of successful team-collaboration at Ealing Studios, which, not coincidentally, made some of the best noirs. Too, London studios were more conveniently located than Hollywood for appropriate location shooting (especially since good, sunny weather was not a requirement for film noir!)

Thus British noirs (with such notable exceptions as Cavalcanti’s THEY MADE ME A FUGITIVE) utilized genuine city streets and other locations far more than did Hollywood, possibly making them a little more realistic, but at the same time losing the cohesive studio-controlled stylization that marked Hollywood noir.

Crime has always been a dominant factor in the noir film, and in Hollywood
film it was often organized crime, headed by an unassailable Mabuse-derived master criminal, often with strong links to corrupt politicians. British politicians are sometimes not very bright in their handling of private scandals, but basically, in the performance of their duties, they are not corrupt. And the British underworld, envious of what it knew of American crime from Hollywood movies, tried to imitate it superficially (costume, wisecracking patter) but was too inefficient to organize itself on a big scale. Thus crime in the British noir is more personalized: the hapless, accidental murderer on the run, or the war veteran’s involvement in petty black-marketeering, the dominant criminal activity of the post-war era. British noir seems to lack the epic proportions of its Hollywood counterpart in that it deals with ”little” people caught up in fairly commonplace events. The definitive British noir, Robert Hamer’s IF ALWAYS RAINS ON SUNDAY (1947), is particularly illustrative of this. The British system of life unfortunately conspires to keep a lot of “little” people in that niche permanently. With a lot of talent and persistence one can still rise to the top in England-but the modicum of talent (that would allow a person to succeed in the U.S.) is usually stifled in Britain by bureaucracy and other restrictions. Moreover, after the war, the British were increasingly frustrated when wartime austerity (food and clothes rationing for example) were maintained for many years, and a return to normalcy seemed forever delayed. Ambition didn’t seem to do much good, so they settled for security. Many British dramas (BRIEF ENCOUNTER) and noirs are often misunderstood over here, because the conclusions seem to be defeatist, whereas to the British they are rational and logical, the only workable selection of two choices. American audiences may wonder why the inhabitants of Bethnal Green, the drab London suburb that is the setting of IT ALWAYS RAINS ON SUNDAY, don’t just pack up and move, at least to a suburb that has a few trees. The answers to that are (a) that housing in Britain has always been a major problem, and such a move might not be possible, and (b) that the people of these communities are often quite happy in them. IT ALWAYS RAINS ON SUNDAY doesn’t stress the point (perhaps because it assumes it will be taken for granted) but it does show the community as closely knit, offering small-scale but enjoyable social gatherings, and with no signs of racial tension between different ethnic groups. Only occasionally does the importance of security and normalcy seem truly tragic, and then usually in a story that does not deal with every-day life, and where the true tragedy of the final solution is so hidden below the surface that it is virtually invisible. Typical is the mirror episode (directed by Robert Hamer also) of the compendium horror film, DEAD OF NIGHT. In that genuinely frightening story, the pleasant but cloddish husband (Ralph Michael), quite unworthy of his more stylish and intellectually stimulating wife (Googie Withers) really comes to interesting life only when he is “claimed” by the haunted mirror. It’s significant that he is the only one of the party of friends gathered for a weekend at Roland Culver’s cottage that does not appear outside of his own story. One hopes that his wife had been smart enough to dump him, but in all probability he was staying at home, earning a few more pounds by bringing his dull accountancy work home from the office.

Which brings us to another representative difference: professions. The major continuing profession in American noir films is that of insurance (DOUBLE INDEMNITY, PUSHOVER, PITFALL) since it conveniently provides the twin motivations of Greed and Sexual Temptation. In British noirs, the unsympathetic heavies tend to be uneducated spivs with delusions of belonging to an Upper Class (a major crime in itself, beautifully exemplified by Griffith Jones in THEY MADE ME A FUGITIVE) who usually make their living from black marketeering and nightclubs. The trapped, sympathetic victim-hero usually makes his living in a particularly demeaning and non-profitable job. Eric Portman, haunted by the insanity of his hangman father in one film, was himself an official hangman in another earning a little extra money in another “demeaning” job, that of a barber. Because of its servile status and the very limited amount of money to be made from it, the British noirs really had it in for barbers. Ralph Richardson’s frustration at earning only a few pennies a day as a barber in ON THE NIGHT OF THE FIRE is what leads him to theft and murder. Unlike many American writers and directors, who may well have been well-educated, but had often been forced to rough it in menial and/or purely physical jobs, the majority of British writers and directors had been well educated and from a near aristocracy. Their innate class distinction prejudices invariably show up in their films, and the poor barber seems to be regarded as only a step above the toilet attendant or the garbage collector. (The former was ignored in British films, the latter used frequently for purely comedic purposes).

In certain ways, British noir did parallel American, not least in the setting up of specialist directors and technicians, and of course, players. Alberto Cavalcanti and Robert Hamer became the directorial specialists in British noir (Hamer also encompassing black comedy as well) with David MacDonald, Carol Reed and the American Joseph Losey trailing. Eric Portman, as both victim and psycho, became Britain’s closest parallel to Robert Mitchum in terms of his usage, although of course he avoided the tough detective hero that Mitchum did so well. Trevor Howard, Robert Newton, Herbert Lom and Richard Todd were all familiar male figures, while Margaret Lockwood, Jean Kent and Diana Dors dominated the distaff side. Despite the thematic French influence, cinematographic specialists were often German, especially in the earlier days when Gunther Krampf’s skills were much utilized. While quite coincidentally Miklos Rosza provided the score for perhaps the first total, bona-fide British noir (1939’s ON THE NIGHT OF THE FIRE) before monopolizing the field in Hollywood, it was the French Georges Aurio who became the dominant noir composer for films of realism (IT ALWAYS RAINS ON SUNDAY) and fantasy and horror (DEAD OF NIGHT, CORRIDOR OF MIRRORS). The emphasis on postwar problems and particularly on the neuroses of war victims and veterans (MINE OWN EXECUTIONER, THE SMALL BACK ROOM) came to its peak in 1947-49 just as it did in Hollywood in such films as THE LOCKET.

As in Hollywood too, British noir seemed poised for a major breakthrough in 1939, with five key films. But in Britain, the war brought noir production to a virtual standstill. While American noir thrillers did well at the British box office, such bleak films as OF MICE AND MEN were not well supported by wartime audiences seeking escapism. 1945 saw a major return to the noir style with six films, but most of them significantly period stories or fantasies not related to contemporary life. In 1946, the number was down to three, but two of them were major breakthrough noirs. Daybreak (even the title was somewhat of a homage to Came’s LE JOUR SE LEVE) was the most French of all the British noirs, and the center of a stormy censorship debacle. WANTED FOR MURDER, while it overlooked many intriguing possibilities, was the first of the new noirs to be both a thriller and to be set in contemporary London. It also made references to the austerity of postwar life, though in a tolerant way. A young romantic couple, dining out, find that all of the items that attract them on the menu are actually unavailable. The British were still able to laugh at the retention of wartime hardships, confident that better times were just around the corner. But they weren’t, and all the frustrations and resentments seem to explode on film in 1947 with a huge leap from three noirs to seventeen.

Part two of this article in the next issue will include a checklist of British noir from 1938 to 1963 (the reasons for those boundary dates will be explained therein) and a survey of the noir highlights of that 25-year period.

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