Once a Sinner

There is very little known and written about as regards Lewis Gilbert's Once a Sinner. It's one of those British "B" noir productions that hasn't been readily available to Brit Noir completists. Thankfully some stalwart noir peeps have kept it topical via internet forums and it does have an official DVD release now.

Once a Sinner is very British. The backdrop is quintessentially of the British period, a place of terrace houses, smoky public houses and working class citizens trawling the wet streets that are dimly lit by bulbous lamps. The dialect and delivery is also very correct in the British mannerisms of the time, and crucially the class divide and society's reaction to our main character is born out by the film makers.

Adapted to the screen by David Evans from the novel "Irene" written by Ronald Marsh, it's a film dealing with a girl from the wrong side of the tracks who steals the heart of a well to do man and subsequently flips his life upside down. Peer and parental pressure snobbery is abound as Irene James (Pat Kirkwood) and John Ross (Jack Watling) try to battle through the emotional maze pitched in front of them. But with a crooked ex-lover (the wonderful Sydney Tafler) refusing to go away, Irene's chances of finally making a go of life seems remote.

For the most part the pace is slow and the picture is very dialogue heavy. Ronald Binge's musical score also confuses the issue of just what type of film this wants to be, it's all very breezy and akin to one of those lovely old Ealing comedies that were made with some wry social commentaries. That is until the last quarter is reached and the piece moves onto a different plane...

Gilbert and cinematographer Frank North introduce ominous visuals as Binge's music becomes more sinister in tone. It is here where Once a Sinner earns its noir badge, the narrative becomes devil like and the pay off is straight out of noirville. It's most assuredly a fitting reward for those having the patience to stay with Gilbert's movie during the more laborious passages. 6.5/10

Middle-class bank clerk Jack Watling meets hoydenish Pat Kirkwood, and before you know it, they're married. When he meets her family, they're boisterous and none too respectable. The breaking point comes when he discovers she has a child with crook Sydney Tafler. She's never told him and is mildly puzzled when he says she should want to be with the youngster. But the lure of the flesh is too strong, until she leaves him to return to Tafler and her own ways.

It is a very middle-class and class-ridden sort of movie, in which bad people are bad and cannot reform. In Miss Kirkwood's case, it's because she simply doesn't feel the way Watling thinks people should wish to behave. As an American, I find it intensely annoying, not just for Watling's lazy assumptions about how people should behave, but the irredeemibility of the under classes; as the title indicates, there's no way out of being a bad woman.

I awarded this film 6/10 and can imagine this was a "B" film in cinemas circa 1950 when it was first released.Although reviewer "gordonl56" from Canada provides a basic plot line, it contains an error which is that Thora Hird does not play Jack Watling's mother but Pat Kirkwood's.His mother is played by Edith Sharpe.This reviewer also mentions some Sydney Tafler's oily parts he played in films.I would like to mention a sympathetic role he played namely the chief physiotherapist who helps Douglas Bader (Kenneth More)to walk again with artificial legs in "Reach for the Sky" (1956) - another Lewis Gilbert directed film.

I enjoyed seeing that big "lug" of an actor Danny Green who played Pat Kirkwood's step father Ticker James, (as I did seeing him in the Ealing comedy, "The Lady Killers".I was pleasantly amused seeing this film for the first time.Was that again Brighton used as a location in the opening shots?Jack Watling was especially notable playing 4th officer Joseph Boxall in the 1958 film "A Night to Remember".

It's funny we think the sexual revolution started in the sixties but this is another film from the early 50s with an underlying feeling of smut the only difference being a feeling of shame which I assume the censor insisted on.