Sträfling 3312 - Auf der Flucht

They Made Me a Fugitive (1947)

This is a vigorous British crime noir film, a counterpart to the great Warner Bros American movies from the same period (and earlier) and to American post-war film noir. (In fact, this was released by Warner Bros.) The plot is fast and twisty and the photography is bold and dramatic with a lot of night scenes. Great stuff. If you like this sort of thing normally you'll love this.

The star is one of the Howard Brothers, Trevor, playing a would-be criminal and eventually the fugitive of the title. He's mixed up with some tough criminal types (British style) and some female leads that have echoes of film noir femme fatales. There is violence, angular camera-work, even a few special effects, and a couple of sympathetic leads who eventually take the plot somewhere new.

Howard's biggest role, in the best movie of his career, came two years earlier in "Brief Encounter," and he's again complex and nuanced and someone to identify with. But he's not especially sympathetic, playing a hardened, selfish type who just happens to have a conscience unlike his cohorts. The movie follows him through several phases of his brush with crime, and with an attempt to clear his name. There is a rather long and dramatic and somewhat unconvincing fight scene near the end (the throw of the milk bottle takes first prize in this one), but the very last scene is brutally pessimistic in a way American noirs are oddly not.

If you like film noir this is a must see. If you appreciate a good movie for its action and drama, likewise. There may be no deep character development are larger social arc here, but that's true of a lot of American noirs, too. So just jump and and soak it all up.

A British noir as good as the definitive ones being turned out in the States by such consensus masters as Mann, Dassin, and Lewis, to name three. And what about that great ending that still leaves me flabbergasted. Three cheers for a British cinema that apparently was able to operate without the albatross of a Production Code and still not wreck the nation's moral fiber. Needless to say, those final few minutes would never have been allowed Stateside where the scales of justice always triumphed, no matter how the world really works.

Then too, consider the household Howard stumbles into by accident, where the zoned out housewife is only too eager to perforate her boozy hubby. One look at that demented visage and she's a lot scarier than any of the professionals. No wonder Howard flees back to the safety of London's underworld. This may also be the cheapest electricity bill on record since the brightest sound-stage bulb checks in at about 60 watts—they don't call it "noir" for nothing. And keep an ear cocked for some of the snappiest dialogue this side of Dashiel Hammett, especially from that old crone Aggie, who, I shudder to think, might actually be somebody's grandmother.

Not that everything is roses. Some of the set-ups operate only at a stretch. For example, Howard's aim with a milk bottle should have him pitching for the Yankees. And he does it with such casual flair, you'd never guess his life is on the line. Nonetheless, the movie's a real sleeper and should have been exported to our shores a lot sooner. I expect, that daring finale would have inspired our own filmmakers to greater sneaky lengths in subverting the dead hand of Hollywood censorship.

What a tight, smart movie. The only criticism I can really level at it is that it's not as good as "The Third Man," and that's only because it doesn't have the gravitas of the unconscionable criminality of Harry Lime.

It does have Trevor Howard, as one of the bad guys this time. His riveting performance as a minor-league crook is matched by Griffith Jones's as a major-league mobster. Sally Gray turns in a strong performance too as the femme fatale who, at one point, takes a beating that she withstands stoically until a girlfriend cleans her up and, finally, gives her a cup of tea. It may be that kindness, or perhaps the hot tea on her split lip, you don't know, but Gray breaks down at last and you realize what the beating has done to her.

The pace is swift, but not rushed. Extraneous but fascinating scenes are included-scenes which lead nowhere-- particularly the homicidal lisping woman and her drunken husband who shelter fugitive Trevor Howard in their house for brief but very creepy period.

Every frame is composed with extraordinary care, especially in the climactic scene in the funeral parlor, a scene that reminded me of nothing so much as "Cabinet of Doctor Caligari." There's hardly a right angle in it. The chiaroscuro photography by Otto Heller ("Alfie," "Victim," "Peeping Tom," etc. etc.) is only enhanced by editing that's almost as whip-crack as the dialog.

And as for that superb dialog: film noir movies typically have wisecrack lines, but this Noel Langley screenplay is brilliantly terse-in league with Chandler's work. If any character had two sentences in a row, I didn't notice. It's all lickety-split exchanges, and every line adds definition or motivation to the character speaking.

A personal note: This is the only film I've ever watched which, after it finished, I immediately started it over and watched it again from the beginning. It was that rich, that engaging, and that satisfying.

Alberto Cavalcanti's THEY MADE ME A FUGITIVE is, to my tastes, the great British Gangster movie and a contender for great Film-Noir as well. At the time of release it was probably overshadowed by BRIGHTON ROCK and THE THIRD MAN, both similar in look and attitude, but what sets FUGITIVE apart is its uncompromisingly bleak realism and pessimistic amorality.

Trevor Howard plays the part of a former R.A.F. pilot who is struggling to survive in the austere post-war era of rationing and comparative boredom of peacetime life.He offers his services to a Black Market racketeer, Narcy, a foppish but lethal character who deals in contraband under cover of his legitimate funeral business.

Narcy and his gang are characters who just didn't appear in British films until GET CARTER came along.They are portrayed as the typical film 'cockney sparrows' of the time but with a difference-they carry flick-knives,knuckle-dusters and even guns.They listen in to the police on a huge radio set. At one point they are seen to knock out a British bobby.-you'd have to be born and raised in Britain in the forties or fifties to realise how what a shock that would have caused at the time of the film's release.

Trevor Howard's character,though,is thoroughly bad in a different way.He is a hero gone wrong,a good chap who lets the side down.When he's in a fight to the death with Michael Brennan he resorts to dirty fighting (very un-British at the time) and even head-butts Brennan.As Howard is creeping into the funeral parlour for the final confrontation with Narcy and his thugs we see a sign with the words ITS LATER THAN YOU THINK,which I believe resurfaced in Herlihy's MIDNIGHT COWBOY.

In conclusion I would like to propose that THEY MADE ME A FUGITIVE should be considered,along with Brighton Rock,Get Carter etc as a prime example of social realism in film.

In the post-war in London, the unemployed and former RAF pilot Clem Morgan (Trevor Howard) is invited by his acquaintance Narcissus "Narcy" (Griffith Jones) to join his gang of smugglers and smalltime thieves that uses a funeral home as headquarter. When Clem sees drugs in a coffin, he decides to leave the gang after his last job looting a warehouse. However Narcy betrays him and activates an alarm, but Clem escapes from the warehouse and gets in Narcy´s car. When the gangster Soapy (Jack McNaughton) is driving the getaway car, Narcy orders him to hit and run a policeman on the street. The car crashes a post and Narcy also hits Clem´s head and flees with Soapy, leaving Clem unconscious in the car. Clem is arrested and convicted for manslaughter and sent to a prison in Dartmoor. When Clem receives the visit of Narcy´s girlfriend Sally Connor (Sally Gray) and learns that his girlfriend Ellie is with Narcy, he decides to escape from prison. Now he is a fugitive and seeks out Soapy to clear his name and Narcy to revenge is betrayal.

"They Made Me a Fugitive" is a good British film-noir with themes that might have impacted the audiences in 1947. There is reference to drug; torture of woman; and wife executing the alcoholic husband. The cast is excellent and the performances are top-notch. The beauty of Sally Gray is ahead of the time. The plot is well-resolved but the woman that kills her husband is forgotten. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Nas Garras da Fatalidade" ("In the Claws of the Fatality")