Eclipse Series 25: Basil Dearden’s London Underground (1959-1962) [The Criterion Collection] [REPOST]

After mastering the mix of comedy, suspense, and horror that helped define the golden age of British cinema, Basil Dearden (along with his producing partner Michael Relph) left the legendary Ealing Studios and struck out on his own. In the late fifties and early sixties, he created a series of gripping, groundbreaking, even controversial films that dealt with racism, homophobia, and the lingering effects of World War II, noir-tinged dramas that burrowed into corners of London rarely seen on-screen. This set of elegantly crafted films brings this quintessential figure of British cinema out of the shadows.



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Othello is translated to the world of sixties London jazz clubs in Basil Dearden’s smoky and sensational All Night Long. This daring psychodrama also features on-screen appearances by jazz legends Charles Mingus, Dave Brubeck, Tubby Hayes, and Johnny Dankworth.



Director: Basil Dearden
Cast: Patrick McGoohan, Keith Michell, Betsy Blair, Paul Harris, Marti Stevens, Richard Attenborough, Bernard Braden, Harry Towb, María Velasco, Dave Brubeck, John Dankworth, Charles Mingus, Bert Courtley, Keith Christie, Ray Dempsey, Allan Ganley, Tubby Hayes, Barry Morgan, Kenny Napper, Colin Purbrook, John Scott, Michael Anthony, Michael Corcoran, Nick Edmett, Graydon Gould, Geoffrey Holder, Gabriella Licudi, Carol White, Jennifer White

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Dearden's jazz world retake of Othello, the 1962 drama All Night Long (91 mins.), hearkens back to Sapphire in terms of its portrayal of interracial romance, but this time around, the union between black and white is not looked at as something scandalous. On the contrary, within the multiracial world of music, it's just a fact of life.

Paul Harris and Marti Stevens play bandleader Aurelius Rex and chanteuse Delia Lane, a jazz power couple who are celebrating their first anniversary in an out-of-the-way nightspot. The story transpires over a single all-night jam session, including real-life legends Dave Brubeck and Charles Mingus. Set to a constant soundtrack of incredible music, All Night Long's rhythm is set, like all music, by the drummer. Patrick McGoohan (The Prisoner) plays Johnny Cousin, the manipulative skins man who is looking to break out of Rex's shadow and start his own band. Johnny needs Delia to front the group if he's going to succeed, but she has been retired since marrying Rex. So, Johnny sets in motion a plot to convince Rex that his current manager, Cass (Keith Michell), is making time with his wife. Once passions explode, the marriage will be kaput, and Delia will go back to work.

Basil Dearden, staging a script by Nel King and Peter Achilles, comes alive in this restricted setting, using the upstairs and downstairs and the side rooms of the club to create a physical puzzle box where he can move the different pieces of the narrative around. McGoohan is also amazing as the craven Johnny Cousin, oozing slime from every pore while playing his cohorts against one another. A lot of the other acting is a little stiff, though Richard Attenborough, who was also in League of Gentlemen, stands out as the owner of the club.

For many, the star of the film will be the music. Led by composer Philip Green, the revolving group of musicians, which also includes Johnny Dankworth and Tubby Hayes, is infections and keeps the movie bopping along, aiding its otherwise slim plot. Dearden shoots much of the jazz up close, and he lets the music affect the mood and, in a Shakespearian flourish, even the weather outside the club walls. It's fun stuff, and it closes out London Underground on an upswing.

A delightful cast of British all-stars, including Richard Attenborough, Bryan Forbes, and Roger Livesey, brings to life this precisely cali­brated caper, which was immensely popular and influenced countless Hollywood heist films.



Director: Basil Dearden
Cast: Jack Hawkins, Nigel Patrick, Roger Livesey, Richard Attenborough, Bryan Forbes, Kieron Moore, Terence Alexander, Norman Bird, Robert Coote, Melissa Stribling, Nanette Newman, Lydia Sherwood, Doris Hare, David Lodge, Patrick Wymark, Gerald Harper, Brian Murray, Beverly Bennett, Terence Edmond, Susanne Gibbs, Nigel Green, Patrick Jordan, Dinsdale Landen, Ronald Leigh-Hunt, Oliver Reed, Norman Rossington, Bruce Seton

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The League of Gentlemen (116 mins.), falls back on more conventional genre trappings–it is a heist picture–and so it has aged and works better as cinema than Sapphire. It is no less of its time, however, as its band of crooks are British veterans who are bored with life after wartime and feeling disenfranchised. They "did their bit," as they say, but life has been no picnic in the intervening decades. Interestingly, they aren't noble soldiers fallen on hard times, they all have checkered backgrounds. Dearden doesn't avoid pat stereotypes about the Greatest Generation so much as he dances around them.

Colonel Hyde, played with acidic stoicism by Jack Hawkins, gathers together a group of ex-officers whom he knows to have had questionable careers and cajoles them into a cracking caper. His theory, which he bases off a dime novel called The Golden Fleece, is that if a group of military brass approaches a bank robbery with the same discipline as they would approach a battle, then there will be no stopping them. His group is a ragtag collection of personalities, including an old con man who poses as a priest (Roger Livesey) and a gentleman gambler (Nigel Patrick again). The film chronicles their preparation, including robbing an army base for weapons and supplies. (Another sign of the times: they affect Irish accents so the blame will be put on the IRA.) Once things are together, we then see Hyde's incredible plan.

The theft is excellently staged, like a British Ocean's 11, complete with the style and wit that made that original Rat Pack film a bit of a hoot. The League of Gentlemen has a gravity not found in the Vegas heist, however; these aren't men living the high life. The rascals have one more opportunity for adventure, and perhaps more important than the money is the camaraderie of the group. They are part of something again, and it gives them purpose. It's the British cliché of the "stiff upper lip"–the movie's sharp tongue and immaculate appearance covers for the heavy heart that beats just underneath.

Basil Dearden’s bold, direct police procedural, starring Nigel Patrick as the detective in charge of the investigation, is a devastating look at the way bigotry crosses class divides, and a snapshot of the increasingly interracial culture of England in the late fifties.



Director: Basil Dearden
Cast: Nigel Patrick, Michael Craig, Yvonne Mitchell, Paul Massie, Bernard Miles, Olga Lindo, Earl Cameron, Gordon Heath, Jocelyn Britton, Harry Baird, Orlando Martins, Rupert Davies, Yvonne Buckingham, Robert Adams, Freda Bamford, Philip Lowrie, Anthony Singleton, Basil Dignam, Fenella Fielding, Boscoe Holder, Desmond Llewelyn, Lloyd Reckord, John Richardson, Barbara Steele, Susan Stranks, Peter Vaughan

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Sapphire (92 minutes), a 1959 crime drama written by Janet Green. The film opens on a grisly scene: a dead girl being discovered in a pile of leaves in a public park. The color film stock of the late 1950s gives Sapphire a look that is more pastel than painterly, adding a surreal glimmer to the scene, as if Dearden wanted to undercut the murder's harsh effects by making it easy on the eyes.

The dead girl is Sapphire, and the mystery of who she is ends up being just as important as the circumstances surrounding her death. Sapphire is structured to lead viewers from the discovery of the body through all the steps the police take to solving her case. It's so straightforward, it struck me as having more in common with television police dramas of the period than with big-screen crime pictures. Superintendent Robert Hazard (Nigel Patrick) and Inspector Phil Learoyd (Michael Craig) could have easily been spun off into a Dragnet: London series.

While the one-two-three of the plot is not all that innovative, Sapphire is notable for the nature of the crime. As the girl's background is uncovered, racial tensions in English neighborhoods are also exposed. Dearden follows the investigation through all levels of social life, be it the whites-only college hang-outs or buttoned up middle-class homes, or the out-of-the-way black nightclubs and the more posh "international club" where immigrants of all stripes congregate. Though the storytelling can be stiff and the morality a bit obvious for modern sensibilities, when Sapphire is placed in its proper context, Dearden and Green should be seen as daring commentators who took a risk by being up front about the sticky hypocrisies and hidden animosity that polite society often covered up. Watching Sapphire, I often had the feeling that I was being led down back alleys I would not otherwise have seen. If the film itself falls short as entertainment, it's still utterly fascinating as a piece of art that tried to approach the times head on.

Basil Dearden’s unmistakably political taboo buster was one of the first films to address homophobia head-on, a cry of protest against British laws forbidding homosexuality.



Director: Basil Dearden
Cast: Dirk Bogarde, Sylvia Syms, Dennis Price, Nigel Stock, Peter McEnery, Donald Churchill, Anthony Nicholls, Hilton Edwards, Norman Bird, Derren Nesbitt, Alan MacNaughton, Noel Howlett, Charles Lloyd Pack, John Barrie, John Cairney, David Evans, Peter Copley, Frank Pettitt, Mavis Villiers, Margaret Diamond, Alan Howard, Dawn Beret, John Bennett, John Boxer, Frank Thornton

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The 1961 film that followed League of Gentleman is more grounded in its drama and has more in common with Sapphire, including screenwriter Janet Green. Victim (100 mins.) stars Dirk Bogarde (The Night Porter) as Melvin Farr, a well-known barrister whose secret life nearly goes public when a boy (Peter McEnery) he shared a brief relationship with is caught in a blackmail racket due to an incriminating photo of the two of them. When the boy is pinched for stealing money to pay the extortion, he ends up killing himself. Overcome with guilt and a sense of duty, Farr decides to investigate the crime and put an end to this victimization of homosexuals.

At the time of the movie, being gay was a crime in England, and as Victim points out, the law against homosexuality ended up doing more harm to one class of people than it helped any others. The legal stigma left gay men open to this kind of attack. Crooks could take advantage of their desire not to be exposed. Surprisingly, Victim doesn't tiptoe around the issue or couch it in euphemism. Though it begins as a thriller with a central mystery–we aren't sure why the boy is in trouble or what he's intending to do–once the secret is uncovered, there is no pretending otherwise. Victim depicts gays secretly congregating in bars and even questions how someone like Farr ended up married and passing as straight. The ring of blackmailees spans all manner of society, be it blue collar workers like the dead boy, car salesmen, or famous actors. There is some tendency for proselytizing here–the policemen in particular are saddled with especially clumsy exposition, just as they were in Sapphire (perhaps it's Green, though she co-wrote Victim with John McCormick)–but the movie otherwise deals with the material in a way that maintains the integrity of the story.

Dirk Bogarde is extremely good in what was likely a risky role. Even these days an actor who plays gay, whether he is gay or not, often ends up perceived as such. Bogard handles Farr's sadness and disappointment in himself quite well, showing how brittle the man's situation has become. It's a difficult state of affairs: he might finally be able to be himself, but the cost will be high. The film had its own share of troubles. It was given an "X" rating in England, and U.S. censors tried to have the word "homosexual" removed, severely limiting the film's options for where it could be seen and by whom when Dearden and his producing partner refused.

Though the title of the box is Dearden's London Underground, one interesting thing about Victim is how much the gay lifestyle is seen as aboveground. Dearden doesn't take us into seedy bars hidden away, but instead shows his characters in neighborhood pubs where everyone knows who they are but turn a blind eye. This adds to the effectiveness of the political message: gay men are among us, they are getting along fine, so why subject them to these unfair practices. It's an intelligent use of storytelling as allegory that works with the images and the scenario rather than relying on preaching or other heavy explanations. The system is seen working against itself, and that is illustration enough.

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