The Blue Lamp

Basil Dearden's 1950 film is about policing in postwar London. PC George Dixon, close to retirement, takes on a new recruit and teaches him the calm order of the night beat: familiar shopkeepers, known criminals, matters settled by talking. The film's subject is that this order no longer works. A new kind of criminal has appeared, armed, young and bound by nothing, and Dixon's experience is no preparation for him. Dirk Bogarde's young offender is drawn as unusually dangerous for the period. The film's most striking decision is to remove the man the audience takes for its protagonist halfway through. The Dixon character later returned in a television series that ran for years. Who it's for: viewers who like classic British crime film and Ealing productions. Who it's not for: anyone troubled by a point of view that affirms the police without questioning them.