They Made Me a Fugitive

Clem is a demobilised air force officer; there is no work, no money and nothing to do. He joins a black market gang run by a man called Narcy, on one condition: no drugs. Narcy ignores it, and when a policeman is killed during a robbery he pins it on Clem. Clem goes to prison, escapes, and comes back to London. Alberto Cavalcanti directs. Trevor Howard plays Clem and Griffith Jones plays Narcy. The world is postwar Britain. Rationing, bombed buildings and the black market are directly inside the narrative; the reason the hero turns to crime is not personal but economic. Cavalcanti was a Brazilian director who came out of the French avant garde and worked in the British documentary school; this is the hardest film he made in Britain. The tone is unexpectedly dark for British films of the period. The censors found it troubling and several scenes caused argument; it was shown cut in America too. The expressionist influence is plain in the image: canted angles, hard shadows, and the cemetery sequence. The women take more room in the narrative than expected, and one of the most memorable scenes is a woman asking Clem to help her be rid of her husband. Who it is for: viewers who like British noir and postwar crime cinema. Who it is not for: the surviving prints vary in quality, the rhythm is uneven, and the ending does not deliver the expected satisfaction.