They Made Me a Fugitive

Clem, Ellen and Narcy

 

Gloria / Alliance, UK 1947. Black and white, 103 minutes.

Director – Cavalcanti. Producers – Nat Branstein, James Carter. Screenplay Noel Langley from the novel by Jackson Budd. Cinematography – Otto Heller. Editor – Margery Saunders.      Certificate A.

 Contains Plot information:

This is one film that seems to receive general agreement as an example of British film noir. It is adapted from a British crime novel and fits into a cycle of the ‘man on the run’. Apparently this is the prime focus of the original novel, but the film broadens the plot out to include the world of gangsters and spivs of the late 1940s. Clem (Trevor Howard) is an ex-RAF officer looking for excitement and easy money in the post-war world. Encouraged by his girlfriend Ellen (Eve Ashley) he falls in with Narcy (Griffith Jones) and his gang, who deal in both stolen and smuggled goods. However, Clem and Narcy fall out and Narcy engineers a set-up in which Clem is captured and sent to jail for the murder of a policeman. This later plot is part of the territory of the book. Narcy erstwhile girlfriend Sally (Sally Gray) visits Clem in prison. She tells him both about the set-up and that Ellen has been taken over by Narcy. Clem escapes and sets out to obtain his revenge.

The film has some parallels with an earlier crime movie They Drive By Night (1938). Some writers include that film in the cycle of British noir.  The sequences of Clem on the run are very similar to those experienced by Shorty, the protagonist in They Drive by Night. This may well relate to the originating books of the films, both example of British crime fiction.

They Made Me a Fugitive has en excellent and experienced production team. Alberto Cavalcanti, the director, is an important and interesting figure in British Cinema of the 1930s and 1940s. He was born in Brazil and then became involved in the avant garde cinema of 1920s Paris. After this he worked in the Griersonian documentary movement. Coalface (1935) and Night Mail (1936) are two of the distinctive documentaries in which he was involved. During the war years he worked at the Ealing Studios, directing what is the classic home front film of World War II Went the Day Well (1942).

The scriptwriter Noel Langley had worked in Hollywood before the UK: His major success there was the non-noir The Wizard of Oz (1939). The director of photography was Otto Heller. There is a gothic strand apparent in much of his film work, including the classics, The Queen of Spades (1948), The Ladykillers (1955) and Peeping Tom (1960).

They Made Me a Fugitive is predominantly a studio production. This gives the film a style closer to that of Hollywood noir than many British examples. There is the carefully controlled use of light and shadow and the overtly stylised look to many of the settings. However, it also has a number of distinctive British characteristics.

As in many Hollywood noirs Clem is a cynical, slightly embittered ex-serviceman. But he is also an ex-officer with the class distinctions that carries. The ex-serviceman who fails to adjust to the changed conditions of peace time is a common character in British films of this period, and they are frequently films that fit into the noir world or include very noir sequences.

Narcy is an example of a type particular to British films of the late 1940s, the spiv. This character hovers in the grey world between the legal and illegal. What marks him out from other criminal types is a self-conscious attention to his own style. Narcy, as his name implies, certainly has the style aspect of the spiv; however, he is more criminal than many, being involved at one point in dealing with drugs.

Another character where UK noir differs from Hollywood is in the absence of a fully formed femme fatale. In many film noirs she acts as a siren tempting the hero into the world of criminality and chaos. In British films like They Made Me a Fugitive the siren type woman is missing. Clem’s girlfriend Ellen is something that type, easily transferring her affection from Clem to Narcy, and with no compunction about their criminal activities. But she is not really a central character, disappearing from the plot once Clem is in prison. Sally is no femme fatale; she is more the ‘good-hearted woman’ exploited by men. And, as happens frequently in noir, the male characters knock her about. There is one fatal woman in the plot. During his escape Clem seeks refuge in a house and is confronted by the wife there, Mrs Fenshaw (Vida Hope). Recognising Clem as an escaped murderer she tries to persuade him to shoot her alcoholic husband. Clem is shocked and repulsed by this and leaves her to her fate. So her appearance is extremely brief, and apparently a hangover from the book.

Hollywood noir is noted both for its cynicism and its terse, evocative dialogue. British noir is more sardonic. So the scenes with the gang are peppered with references to religion and hymns. And when the upbeat resolution has Clem returning to jail but likely for an early release, Sally promises to ‘wait for him’. Clem response to this is ‘I was afraid of that’. The tone ties in with the tendency of British noir to the gothic. The gothic element is a major strand in British horror and there is an overlap between the horror and UK noir genres. The gothic involves gloomy settings, often-grotesque characters and an element of the supernatural or the fantastic. The key film from this point of view is the omnibus Dead of Night (1945, on which Cavalcanti was one of the directors).

The gothic feel is partly due to the cinematography of Otto Heller. It is there is some of the street scenes in the film. Most noticeably it is there in the gang’s base, a Funeral Undertaking. There are empty coffins on the ground floor and a marvellous R.I.P. sign on the roof. It is here that the final confrontation between Clem and Narcy takes place.

Whilst Heller contributed to several more British noirs Cavalcanti only contributed the part-noir For Them That Trespass (1949) before returning to his native Brazil. However, They Made Me Fugitive remains one of the key examples in this British genre. The cinematography is excellent, supported by fluid editing: Margery Saunders had worked under David Lean at Cineguild. The pace of the film drives the plot forward. And the cast is convincing, with only the occasional slip in accents. The film exemplifies the particular virtues found in our native noir.