Basil Dearden's London Underground
by Oliver Pattenden Cineaste Magazine June 2011 (Web Exclusive)
Sapphire
Produced by Michael Relph; directed by Basil
Dearden; written by Janet Green; cinematography
by Harry Waxman; edited by John D. Guthridge;
music by Philip Green; starring Nigel Patrick,
Michael Craig, and Paul Massie. DVD, Color, 92 min., 1959.
The League of Gentlemen
Produced by Michael Relph; directed by Basil
Dearden; written by Bryan Forbes; from the novel
by John Boland; cinematography by Arthur
Ibbetson; edited by John D. Guthridge; music by
Philip Green; starring Jack Hawkins, Roger
Livesey, Nigel Patrick, Richard Attenborough, and
Bryan Forbes. DVD, B&W, 116 min., 1960.
Victim
Produced by Michael Relph; directed by Basil
Dearden; written by Janet Green and John
McCormick; cinematography by Otto Heller; edited
by John D. Guthridge; music by Philip Green;
starring Dirk Bogarde, Sylvia Sims, Dennis Price
and Nigel Stock. DVD, B&W, 100 min., 1961.
All Night Long
Produced by Michael Relph; directed by Basil
Dearden; written by Nel King and Peter Achilles;
cinematography by Ted Scaife; edited by John D.
Guthridge; music by Philip Green; starring Paul
Harris, Richard Attenborough, Patrick McGoohan
and Keith Mitchell, with appearances by Dave
Brubeck, Charles Mingus and Tubby Hayes. DVD, B&W, 91 min., 1962.
A Criterion Collection Eclipse four-disc box-set,
distributed by Image Entertainment,
www.Image-Entertainment.com
The current fear amongst most liberals in Britain
is the extreme likelihood that British Prime
Minister David Cameron is dragging the nation
back to the days of Thatcherism at lightning
speed. While the specter of the dark days of the
Eighties indeed looms with every library closure
and cut to the NHS, there are also lessons to be
learned by turning back the pages of recent
history books to the equally difficult days of
austerity in the decade and a half following
World War II. The Fifties saw Britain facing new
social and political concerns, and found the
nation struggling to stake some identity both at
home and in a changing world, while coping with
financial difficulty and social unrest. There are
clear parallels to the Fifties in the asceticism
of the sober Britain of today and, furthermore,
in the social issues challenging a conflicted and exhausted society.
Out of these difficulties of the postwar years
stemmed one of the most productive and memorable
eras in British cinema, so clearly characterized
by the 'realist' directors of the British New
Wave. It is primarily owing to this movement that
to this day realism and social relevance remain
the pilot lights for most discourse surrounding
British cinema. Basil Dearden, an alumnus of
Ealing Studios with a penchant for politically
motivated cinema made with meticulous production
values, existed outside of the gritty and stoic
esthetic that was the fashion in the late Fifties
and early Sixties. Given their more overtly
political themes and stylistically grandiose
visuals, Dearden's films felt in contrast to the
principal esthetic of realism and are more
commonly identified as 'social problem' films.
While Dearden's films were often commercially and
critically successful in Britain, they don't have
quite the same legacy today as the 'kitchen-sink'
dramas of filmmakers such as Tony Richardson or
Lindsay Anderson, but they tackle much more
focused and relevant political issues that were
affecting the social landscape in Britain during that time.
This new box set by the Criterion Collection's
budget offshoot project Eclipse features four of
Dearden's collaborations with long-term producer
Michael Relph (also of Ealing heritage), which
coincide with the formation of their Allied Film
Makers production company: the racial murder
mystery, Sapphire; the atypically class-conscious
heist film, The League of Gentlemen; the
blackmail thriller, Victim; and a resetting of
Shakespeare in a Sixties jazz club, All Night
Long. It is easy to view this set of Dearden's
films in the context of other socially situated
works of the late Fifties and early Sixties, and
it seems clear that this was the frame in mind
when this new set was being curated. The term
'social-problem film' seems almost tailored to
Dearden's provocative expos's during this time.
While Dearden may be remembered for his role as a
social filmmaker, he should also be recognized as
an accomplished craftsman; a director of
accomplished artistry and astounding ability with
the narrative conventions of cinema.
More than anything, Dearden was a consummate
genre director, working with ease through myriad
filmic styles and structures (probably best
exemplified by the epic Khartoum [1966]). By
utilizing his skills with genre films to examine
society's darkest flaws, Dearden managed to do
something more than just address a social issue;
he exploited the ability of cinema to entertain,
placing 'social problems' in a generic context
that would gain more attention. For example,
Sapphire and Victim (both authored by Janet
Green) tackle suppressed social issues couched in
forceful suspense narratives, successfully
shaping the viewer's emotional response to such
topics. Similarly, League of Gentlemen conveys
overlooked aspects of class and gender in the
postwar era through humor and adventure, thus
investing the audience with the expectations (and
disappointments) of the protagonists. Because of
his daringness to marry style and controversial
topics, Dearden was able to remove any judgment
or focused message from his films, allowing for a larger impact.
Dearden's first cinematic work of note occurs in
Ealing's classic horror compendium Dead of Night
(1945), in a vignette about an injured race-car
driver confronted by a premonition of his own
death. This short, anecdotal piece insouciantly
recounts the story of a man who one night sees a
hearse driver appear with 'room for just one
inside,' before later that week seeing the same
man collecting tickets on a bus that soon crashes
off a bridge. Like much of the film, Dearden's
sequence balances the joint pleasures of humor
and terror with giddying delight. Despite being
so early in his career, it's clear from his apt
handling of this succinct, mysterious narrative
that Dearden's key attribute is his deft
manipulation of tone based on a firm
understanding of genre conventions. The hearse
driver's immortal line is at once eerie and
hilarious, and the episode is formed with a
masterful approach to suspense that would later
prove key to the success of his social problem films.
Sapphire
Dearden's involvement in films focused on social
issues had been established throughout the
Fifties by films such as The Blue Lamp (1950) and
Violent Playground (1958), though these films
were far more pedantic in nature, and by the turn
of the Sixties, he was demonstrating an important
stylistic makeover. The plots of both The Blue
Lamp and Violent Playground are centered on
juvenile delinquency, and subsequently focus
heavily on the social institutions involved in
correction. While frequently exciting, the
mystery-cum-police-propaganda film The Blue Lamp
often feels stodgy, weighed down with a
doctrinaire tone that feels as restrictive on the
narrative as the film pleads the police to be on
a delinquent society. Similarly, Violent
Playground, a film about a Liverpudlian gang,
becomes a paean for social workers, whose
influence is deemed necessary to better the situation of frustrated teens.
By Sapphire, the focus is no longer on promoting
the positive structures that are in place to
protect society, rather the films are driven by
exposing issues overlooked by the system. In
earlier films, Dearden never shied away from
plainly speaking about solutions to social issues
(often in the case of voice-over prologues). In
contrast, the films in this set leave open any
questions of societal obligation or morality,
instead offering the viewer the opportunity to
experience the problems firsthand through a
visceral sense of tension. While there is
undoubtedly a sense of guilt at feeling narrative
or cinematic pleasure by indulging in the
pressure in these films, it forces us to feel the
significance of the social issues at play within
the stories. Dearden rarely relied on subtext or
allegory, preferring to construct his films to
deliver the necessary punch to spur debate on the
politics behind the personal experiences he depicted.
Dearden's heist film, League of Gentlemen
The League of Gentlemen finds Dearden returning
in spirit to his roots at Ealing, building on
Ealing's successful coupling of satire and
adventure by constructing a crime plot that
balances cynicism and escapade. The film depicts
a recently decommissioned colonel who, feeling
frustrated at his dismissal following a committed
career in the army, gathers a group of skilled
but shamed and mainly destitute former officers
to collaborate on a large-scale bank robbery.
Where League differs from other films in the
heist genre is how clearly it foregrounds the
social circumstances for the protagonists turn
to crime. While each of the characters
transgressions has in one way or another led to
their discharge, the film makes a subtle case for
the military abandoning its servants in the
decade after the war. The film's lasting image is
of the plotters donning wartime gas masks to
cover their identities for the bank robbery,
squarely tying each of these now committed
criminals to their past in service protecting the nation.
In addition to being a unique take on the heist
film, League works as a great ensemble piece. So
many of the key Ealing comedies, such as Hue and
Cry (1947) and Passport to Pimlico (1949), were
ensemble films without a key character (or, more
importantly, a major star). League features
several star actors (including the film's
screenwriter, Bryan Forbes), many of whom put in
superb turns, particularly an understated,
anxious Richard Attenborough and a sly Nigel
Patrick. Where Ealing often thrived on a sense of
community, the high number of standout
individuals in League adds to the tension and
disquiet amongst this desperate group as they
attempt to put their training to use one more
time. Dearden truly gets the most out of a
talented cast, often revealing their individual
pasts through carefully worked interactions
between different members of the group.
Dearden's ability to evoke brilliant performances
is also quite evident in Victim, a courageous and
edgy film that confronted the consequences of
institutionalized homophobia. Victim is built on
a remarkable study in paranoia and repression
from Dirk Bogarde, who ushered in the second,
more sinister phase of his career with this film.
Bogarde's portrayal of a closeted homosexual
lawyer trapped in the middle of a blackmail
scandal is made the focal point of this
concentrated, claustrophobic thriller. Dearden
emphasized Bogarde's haunting and oppressive
loneliness with stark and imposing camera work,
making a stylistic masterpiece out of a notoriously divisive subject.
Victim, produced only a few years after the
Wolfenden Report lobbied for the
decriminalization of homosexuality in Britain,
feels like a protest embedded in a taught and
tense drama. Victim, in fact the first film in
the English language to use the word
'homosexual,' is credited with bringing the
trials of those persecuted under arcane laws to
the mainstream and thus influencing the revision
of these laws later in the Sixties. Victim's
success in bringing attention to such a deeply
marginalized social issue lies in its attention to its suspense plot.
Dirk Bogarde in Victim, the first English
language film to use the word "homosexual"
As with Sapphire, the film for the most part
eschews any punctiliousness when it comes to the
moral and legal debates engendered by its subject
matter. Curiously, both films allow for any
moralistic arguments to be posited by police
officers working on the case. In Victim it occurs
in one of the film's most enjoyable moments, as
the chief inspector reminds his snidely
moralistic assistant that Puritanism was once as
outlawed as homosexuality. The film instead
imbues the viewer with a sense of fear and
discomfort that travels straight from Bogarde's
immense performance, forcing all but the most
close-minded of viewers to ally with the outlawed barrister.
The earliest and latest films in this set deal
(to varying degrees) with issues of immigration
and race in London around the turn of the
Sixties. In addition to introducing fresh
cultural ideas to a changing nation, the emerging
influx of immigrants from the West Indies during
the mid-to-late Fifties had a significant affect
on certain communities and cultures within
Britain, often a disturbing reaction from the
working classes (signified by the birth of such
groups as the Teddy Boys). There are very few
texts, however, from the era itself that deal
with the tensions and the humanist problems that
arose from the resistance within Britain.
Sapphire skirts any specific references to racial
tension in London, but is clearly an allegorical
response to the Notting Hill riots of the previous year.
The film follows the investigation into the
murder of a young girl, a popular student in
London who is revealed to have been 'passing for
white'.The film doesn't foreground any notions
of racial harmony being a lost ideal; rather the
topic of race is only brought in slowly, as the
investigation deepens. What makes it particularly
unusual, is the plot development that so few of
the people who knew Sapphire knew she was of
mixed race. It makes the issues of race that much
more arbitrary and muddled, conveying to the
viewer a genuine frustration that her race may
have caused her death. While race becomes a clear
possibility as a motive, Green's screenplay
cleverly skews what Sapphire's race means to
different parties, offering a range of different
potential prejudices along the way. As the
tension builds within the investigation and the
reality that this is a hate crime is established,
bigotry becomes increasingly threatening,
sinister, and despicable to the viewer.
All Night Long might be the most difficult film
here to classify as a landmark in its own right.
The film reimagines Othello set at an exclusive
all-night jazz party in a fashionably
reconstituted warehouse space on the southeast
bank of the Thames (hosted by a charmingly
effervescent Richard Attenborough). The film is
propelled by a constant stream of energetic live
jazz, which features such luminaries as Charles
Mingus and Dave Brubeck performing on screen, but
it is ultimately less immediate than the first
three in this set. Despite the creative premise
for the film, the screenplay somewhat lacks the
spark of the other films here, though Dearden
makes up for this with compellingly stylistic
footage of the live performances.
The main value in including All Night Long
alongside these other Dearden films is in how
eloquently and subtly he handles any mention of
race in the film. By seamlessly transitioning a
canonized English text into a contemporary
setting influenced by new immigrant cultures,
Dearden makes a de facto case for celebrating and
incorporating new cultural imports to Britain.
Where Sapphire made clear the conflicts and
tensions surrounding black culture in London, All
Night Long depicts a more open-minded, inclusive version of London.
All Night Long is a reimagining of Othello in a London jazz club
With the exception of All Night Long, each of
these films openly depicts a 'problem' within
British society, and each film addresses the
flaws within the systems in place. By the
Sixties, Dearden had matured from the director
who felt compelled to foreground and pontificate
on society's needs in his films, opting to coerce
his audience into feeling the tensions caused by
prejudice and neglect. In retrospect, these films
failed to have the same legacy that the
class-based dramas of the British New Wave would
have on the landscape of 'social realism' over
the decades, but there is room here to explore
Dearden's model as a productive and relevant one.
While most of the issues in these films are dated
now, both their stylistic success and positive
response to social struggles could prove a
significant influence on contemporary filmmakers
looking for a rejoinder to the Britain of The
Big Society. As Cameron sets about dismantling
social institutions in Britain, from the
community centers to the police and the military,
there is the slight consolation of the thought
that Britain tends to respond to difficult times
with a fruitful spell of cinematic eminence
(though this may be optimistic when considering
funding, given that Mr. Cameron has already abolished the UK Film Council).
This Eclipse collection does what it promises in
delivering the films in the simplest of fashions,
augmented only by some insightful notes from
Michael Koresky. Given the high value of these
films, it's slightly disappointing that they
aren't being presented with slightly more
context, particularly given how specific their
issues are to their time. The quality of the
DVDs, however, is exceptionally good, and
packaged together the set certainly whets the
appetite for further Dearden releases in the
future. The existence of this set on our shelves
now is a great service to those interested in the
power of cinema to convey an effective and
meaningful political message. Beyond this,
beneath the bold and frequently jarring social
issues on display, these four diverse and
pleasurable films give forth a strong case for
Dearden's work being made more available purely
for its filmic mastery and visual pleasure.
Oliver Pattenden is a free-lance writer with an
MA in Film Studies from the University of East Anglia.
To buy Basil Dearden's London Underground, click
<
http://www.amazon.com/Eclipse-Undergrou ... r=1-1>here.