I’m always fascinated by star quality, that elusive aspect of an actor that makes them stand out from the rest of the crowd. The person who, in a frame otherwise filled with people, will have you going, “Hey, what is that person there doing?” Dirk Bogarde would eventually have this, but doesn’t quite yet in 1950’s The Blue Lamp. I guess aspect of his appearance here is he is younger here than I have ever seen him before. Maybe he wasn’t ripe yet. I didn’t find his performance in this film as interesting as I expected it to be. Even more curious, the director was Basil Deardon, who I put in my pantheon of cinema gods, if only for helming The League of Gentlemen.
The opening titles definitely promise excitement, as the credits run over a police car in a high-speed pursuit of a vehicle. That sequence will end in a shoot-out. A smart decision was to not have any music over this.
Immediately afterwards, the film makes its first misstep, as ponderous narration tells us about London police officers and the various types of crime they are trying to curtain. As if the script is a PSA, we are informed there need to be more officers on the streets. There’s also some speechifying about the importance of traditional households. I was waiting for the narration to yell at me to get off its lawn.
The film will largely follow two threads. One is an older bobbie (Jack Warner) and the latest recruit (Jimmy Hanley), whom he will take under his wing, and even into his home. Um…to clarify, he and his wife take Hanley in as a border. Geez, one has to be so pedantic nowadays. The other thread follows two young hoodlums (Bogarde and Patric Doonan) as they start doing heists. As the narrator tells us, these kinds of criminals don’t have records yet but also aren’t accepted by the crime establishment. Maybe they need to look for a mentorship under an established gangster.
Early on, not much seems to be happening. The bobbies tell a fruit vendor to move it along, and he dutifully moves the cart about three feet down the road. On returning to the station, the only drama is the arrest of a man presumably for being public fake drunkenness. We will later see some of the officers in a chorus the station has. Later still, we will see them playing darts. Obviously, this all supports the narrator’s assertion we need more police on the streets.
Things pick up a bit when Bogarde and Doonan rob a jewelry store. When Bogarde’s squeeze (Peggy Evans) is briefly detained at police headquarters, a detective notices she has a compact matching the description of one of the stolen items reported. Then tension develops between Bogarde and Evans, and a cop who tried to intervene in one of the robberies was left with the belt from Bogarde’s raincoat in his hand.
Perhaps the best moment in the film is the climax set at a crowded dog track. In a moment reminiscent of Fritz Lang’s M, both the police and the criminal element end up hunting for Bogarde. Guess he was in danger of giving organized crime a bad name. Oh, and dog tracks.
The performances are functional, but nothing particularly special. One unfortunate exception is Evans, of whom I challenge anybody to not to use the word “shrill”. She shrieks a great deal, especially towards the end, and at a frequency which should prick up the ears of every dog in a mile radius of anybody watching this.
I’m not sure why The Blue Lamp didn’t click for me. It wasn’t especially bad, but it wasn’t particularly good, either. Apparently, it was a highly successful and influential film in the UK, and I guess it is a bit edgier than similar far from that year. As for myself, I’d rather see a movie about the stubborn little girl who finds Bogarde’s gun. A bobbie walks her to the police station, with a long parade of kids behind them, chanting, “GONNA LOCK HER UP!” Now that got my attention.
Dir: Basil Dearden
Starring Jack Warner, Dirk Bogarde, Jimmy Hanley
Watched on Kino Warner blu-ray