Le déserteur

What you will remember of this film is the local atmosphere from the post war London with its rather weary aspect both in people and their minds and the shaggy streets, ultimately leading you down to old Wapping with one of the most genuine pub atmospheres found in any film, but there is a long way to go before that.

You will also remember the difficult case of 20,000 deserters after the war, many of them turning to criminality for having no other choice. That's the clinch in which our hero finds himself, when a burglary takes place the moment he is trying to pawn his old gun without bullets, the two robbers in desperation shooting both the clerk and, when on the run, a policeman fatally - the first casualty in the film. The clerk recovers and gives a description of our hero, whom he saw, while the two burglars were masked. So our hero finds himself wanted for murder. Could you get into any deeper sea of trouble?

It's also memorable for the fine performance by Joan Hopkins, who plays a widow who believes in our hero's innocence, Kenneth More has a small part in the beginning, which turns out fatal for our hero on a constant run, and Laurence Harvey is a policeman - neither is sympathetic. Derek Farr plays our hero convincingly enough, a completely ordinary man with an inordinate amount of bad luck, having lost practically all his family in the war. It's a sad story but well made, and the beautiful music adds some extra romantic and melancholy charm to it. In spite of the poor technical quality, I must give it almost a full score for its interesting story of an eloquent script, fluent tempo and excellent cinematography.

This is the one and only movie I saw (and I saw many) tackling the theme of deserters. Main character Peter is one of them, a guy who used to be a good soldier but felt compelled to run AWOL after four years of war because his father died in a raid and his mother and sister needed his presence.

Peter is working as a bartender in a remote corner of England when an ex-comrade happens to pass by and tries to blackmail him. Peter moves to London, where life is difficult and expensive, and while trying to pawn his weapon he gets involved in an attempted robbery. He's only a witness but the police are chasing him.

Attractive widow Jean comes to his help and the plot develops nicely, albeit in a slightly forced way towards a suitable ending. The interesting part is the perspective of deserters, considered both from a negative and less negative point of view and just for that, the movie deserves some extra points.

An astringent little drama painting a vivid picture as shot by Wilkie Cooper of a seething postwar London rife with deserters, blackmailers and other lowlifes.

Top-billed Joan Hopkins is rather stiff as the heroine, but this actually renders her more more rather than less appealing - not being conventional leading lady material - and as usual the supporting case is full of entertaining surprises, including early appearances by Kenneth More and a moustached Laurence Harvey in only his second film role as a detective.

Although I saw this on a very poor DVD transfer it held my attention from beginning to end. Yes, as other reviewers have pointed out, there's nothing new here, but it's expertly done, and it's interesting to know that there were apparently 20,000 deserters on the run in the UK in 1949, and one imagines that many of them were as hard-done-by as our hero, but I won't spoil anything by revealing why he deserted. The film is certainly sympathetic to those 20,000 men who get the blame, by several representative members of the cast, for everything that's wrong with post-war Britain. Derek Farr is excellent in the main role as the deserter who has to raise some money when Kenneth More, who had served in the same outfit, happens into the pub where he's working under an alias and decides to blackmail him. While he's trying to pawn a gun the pawnshop is robbed and a policeman killed making him one of the suspects. Joan Hopkins is the sympathetic woman who helps him. Edward Chapman is the inspector investigating the case with ever-increasing impatience. Laurence Harvey, although billed fourth, has little to do as a sergeant with a soft spot for Hopkins. Plenty of noir atmosphere. Recommended.

Peter Burden (Derek Farr) is an army deserter, one of twenty thousand British men who live in fear of imprisonment even after the war has ended. Having served four years, the authorities denied his request for compassionate leave in order to attend his mother's deathbed and he absconded in disgust. He is now working as a landlord of a country pub and is pulling pints when an old army acquaintance (Kenneth More) walks in and recognizes him. Corporal Newman is newly demobbed and, having found only low-paid work in the area, opportunistically blackmails Burden. Terrified, Burden flees again, this time returning to London, where a lack of funds and the late rent on a ragged bedsit force him to try and pawn his old service revolver. At the jeweller's, however, two armed robbers arrive and promptly kill a copper, with Burdon believed to be part of the gang.

His attempts to elude the police become more perilous than ever and a desperate escape sees him bounding breathlessly into the house of young widow Jean Adams (Joan Hopkins). Jean takes pity on the ex-soldier and agrees to help. The pair become determined to find the robbers, knowing only that one of them (Edward Underdown) is missing two fingers on his left hand. All the while, they must avoid the grimly persistent Chief Inspector Mitchell (Edward Chapman) and Detective Sergeant Lawson (a young Laurence Harvey), who prove to be quite able pursuers...

Lawrence Huntington directed, produced and wrote this foray into near-noir which was presumably inspired by the many deserters still at large long after V. E. Day. His script carefully positions Burdon as a sympathetic figure (the name is well-chosen).

The sad circumstances surrounding his desertion and the fact he had spent most of the war in combat is repeated at least once. To steer clear from presenting him as a coward or a chancer was undoubtedly important as everyone in the audience would have known soldiers or might even have been one themselves. Huntington also has his protagonist plea for a more constructive solution to the problem, particularly when so many such people inevitably turn to crime to survive. This situation, often forgotten today, makes Man on the Run interesting and slightly more nuanced than other chase thrillers, though it so solidly sides with Burdon that a more minute exploration of similar issues facing other such soldiers - for example, post-traumatic stress or the frustrating futility of war itself - is avoided altogether. There's a sense that each man would have his own story, though nobody describes what those might be.

Derek Farr is excellent as Burdon: pained, thoughtful, and reluctant to enlist anyone else's help. It's a shame he didn't have more of a career as he could easily have become a Kenneth More. More himself pops up early on, well before his middle-class every-man persona, like an English James Stewart in tweeds and a pipe, would lead him to become one of Britain's biggest film stars.

The police investigation, meanwhile, is headed by the sort of dogged, pipe-smoking detective familiar to pictures of this period, with Chapman's chief inspector wry and astute enough to elicit tension.

It's this quietly humming, will-they-catch-him? Element which carries the film, particularly in the excellent first half, though a thrilling set-piece of the sort included in The 39 Steps (which also had a bad guy deprived of a digit) or North By Northwest is unfortunately even more elusive than Burdon himself.

Particularly interesting for its glimpses of post-war life (from genuine London locations to a reference to radio's proto-James Bond Dick Barton), plus some gently amusing moments, Man on the Run makes for an entertaining and compelling thriller which is much recommended.