Passeport pour la honte

What a wonderful surprise! I was hopeful but not particularly expectant of good things here but it seemed worth a look with a warning preface from 'Fabian of the Yard', a starring role for Herbert Lom and appearances from Diana Dors and Eddie Constantine. In the event this turns out very well, nothing like as scandalous today as it would have been back in the late 50s but still fairly tough and uncompromising. Constantine, a veteran of 'B' pictures whose real claim to fame would come a few years later when Goddard would utilise his rugged looks in Alphaville plays an heroic taxi cab driver against Herbert Lom who plays the baddest of men in charge of a vice ring. Both men are particularly effective and the film, directed and lit like a noir, serves them both well. Also served well is Diana Does, her magnificent full on appearance at the start and the comment about belonging in the gutter as she smiles makes it see she may be limited to this wondrous cameo but no, she puts in a great performance throughout, the seeming excess of make-up probably more down to the fantastic clarity of the new Blu-ray. Vivid but hard to identify west London location predominate with most seeming in the Bayswater area. There is one particular scene, very unusual in British films, showing a whole area of a smart looking street with numerous ladies of the night arranged about and approaching passers by and a close-up of an ultra smart looking Whiteleys of Queensway. The seeming romantic interludes are probably a little overdone but from start to finish this is a fast moving and, if not as exploitative as suggested, certainly more lurid than might have been expected for a 60+ year old film shot on the streets of London and Walton on Thames.

This film is a wonderful summary of hypocritical late fifties cinema. Purporting to reveal the sordid life of the prostitute but revelling in the sleaze and violence. From the opening lecture from *Fabian * of the Yard, to a climactic roof fight, every cliche about girls on the game is flung at the viewer. Poor Diana Dors and Herbert Lom try, but are done in by the florid script and dull direction. Spot Michael Caine in a bit part at the wedding.

I fully expected this to be as lurid as its title but watched it anyway, probably because I first found it under its much cooler name, Room 43. Glad I did; it's immediately engrossing. A sweet French waitress is framed into prostitution. The first step is to set her up as a "thief" at her place of work. Then the madam, who works for the pimp, swoops in to "save" her and whisk her off to England. Once there they tell her she needs to marry a brit to stay there, enter our hero cabbie. This is all in service of forcing her into the life. There are some wonderfully 50s bombshells to contrast against her innocence which is underscored by her finding and adopting a kitten, as well as and other beauties of the era.

Passport to Shame. What a great title, which is why it's surprising it should be changed to the more prosaic Room 43 across the Atlantic. It was more usual for British films going in that direction to have their names 'sexed-up' e.g. Hammer's The Flanagan Boy became Bad Blonde.

It is introduced pre-credits by Ex-Superintendent Robert Fabian 'Fabian of the Yard' himself, who claims that London 'has probably the worst prostitution problem in the world' and goes on to say that the film presents what is going on 'frankly, dramatically and accurately'. Though no doubt it was thought this necessary to forestall any problems with the BBFC, and it is striking how his inference that the majority of prostitutes were there by coercion rather than choice chimes with that of some modern radical feminists, it was quite true that many of the incidents the film depicts were commonplace. There really were gangster pimps and ponces like Herbert Lom's Nick Biaggi who terrorized any of their victims thinking of giving evidence against them, and the false wedding racket was widely used by the likes of the notorious Messina brothers and their low-life successors.

There is a great cast including some of my favourite actors, including Eddie Constantine, Diana Dors at her most spectacular, and Herbert Lom himself. Elwyn Brook-Jones is a strikingly slimy crooked solicitor, and while I've never rated Brenda De Banzie as a particularly convincing actress she's very good as a blowzy vicious madame. Scenes such as the fake wedding with the seedy guests are well done, though those toward the end, including the cabbies' attack on the vice den, borrowed from an earlier film, Noose, of a decade earlier tend toward the risible. Previously only available in a mutilated version sans the Fabian introduction, Passport to Shame has been released complete by Network on a R2 disc with vastly improved sound and visuals.

Among the sundry delights to be found in this British white slavery sexpose is the gonzo turn by Herbert Lom. As London's mac daddy supreme Nick Biaggi, Lom is a sight to behold, a horn-doggie dandy in homburg, lapel carnation and spats (au courant fashion be damned). He's low-key at first, oozing oily charm and generosity, the better to bamboozle naive French waif Odile Versois, who's been lured into a life of shame by Lom's field procurer/mamasan/mistress Brenda De Banzie. But behind closed doors it's a whole 'nother Herb. Channeling his inner Michael Gough, he's all over Odile like a cheap suit, manhandling her love handles and assaulting her face with wet, slobbering kisses. It's truly an unhinged spectacle; even Lom's toupee looks like it has an erection.

Also in the house: affable tough guy Eddie Constantine as the world's least likely Canadian, the always welcome Robert Brown (Tumak's dad in One Million Years B.C., 'M' in the Bond films of the '80s) as a two-fisted cabbie who rouses his fellow hacks to do battle with the 'ho-mongers, Diana Dors, poured into bum-busting skirts and Frederick's of Soho lingerie, as a hooker with a score to settle, and, as the groom at a wedding party, a remarkably young Michael Caine.

All this plus a wacky weed-induced dream scene that must be seen to be disbelieved.

Lowdown high times guaranteed.