Au coin de la rue

Anne Crawford is a young cop, assigned to less hazardous duty: not that hazard doesn't come up, given she might have to pursue a baby onto a high window ledge.

Muriel Box's earnest movie about the routines of modern low-level police work runs the gamut of situations, with a gradually increasing level of crime. Peggy Cummins, playing an 18-year-old, is one of the running links connecting crimes, as she goes from shoplifting, to a missing-person report filed by her husband, to the girl of a dangerous gangster.... wearing stolen jewelry.

It's a paean to routine paying off and muddling through, dealing with streetwalkers who don't want to be arrested by women, and one slice of cops on the take....: men cops, although whether the implication is that women are above that sort of thing, or lack the opportunity is unclear. Good directing and decent performances is the rule of the day in this movie, with Thora Hird given a small, funny bit when she accuses the police of luring small children in with treats.

Directed by one of the few women directors in the 1950s, 'Street Corner' concentrates on several women police officers going about their work. Several negative comments are made by the characters in the film about 'cops in skirts' but the film shows how capable they are. Nothing is mentioned about their home lives, they are people with a job who get on with it. Made in the early fifties it gives a foretaste of the social changes to come. The women policeman are defined by their work not their relationships. Most of the incidents are 'domestic' but there is robbery and violence too in the film.

The film is located in London and it is startling to see in the film early housing estates being used by the characters. It is a cliche in modern British films to have the housing estate as a nexus of crime and poverty. In this film they are look clean and the lifts work. The film has a similar feel to the classic Ealing film 'The Blue Lamp'.

The male actors are bland but the female actors are accomplished British performers, Rosamund John, Barbara Murray, Anne Crawford, Sarah Lawson, Eleanor Summerfield, Peggy Cummins etc. Dora Bryan and Thora Hird are hilarious in bit parts. Films like these from the fifties need re-appraisal as they are more than the sum of their parts. A modest but absorbing film, I'm pleased I picked it up in a sale at a video shop.

This is a most amazing film for its genuinely documentary character and highly developed polyphony. Many characters are involved and intertwined in this drama, led by female policemen, who mainly have to deal with women in trouble - and their children. There are three great women stories of which at least one ends positively and surprisingly well. There are many dramatic episodes, like saving children from falling down from skyscrapers, tracing evasive and invisible gangster rackets involving innocent people, and all the criminality of a huge town but on a small scale. It is a very human police film with the human approach being extra accentuated by the female touch. This is a film that every female policeman should watch and learn from.

Entertaining tale that focuses more on the criminal underworld than the female police officers it professes to be about. It nimbly follows a number of plot strands, some of which interweave, and some which pretty much stand alone. Terence Morgan and Michael Medwin dress like American gangsters as they ensnare flighty but naive young mum Peggy Cummings in their criminal lifestyle, while a host of familiar faces provide colourful support.

Police films were becoming very popular in the fifties so Sydney and Muriel box decided on something different,concentrating on police women.In those days they had a separate women's police force.So the film concentrates on the experiences of women.So Eleanor Summerfield is an army deserter and botanist.Peggy Cummins is a shoplifters tied up with crook Terence Morgan.There are a few minor story lines.As the film comes to the boil Morgan batters a Pembroke,convincingly played by Charles Victor.This ends up in an exciting climax where Morgan runs through bomb sites.It is an interesting film for its views of Lonon in the early fifties and some of the stereotypical views of women of that era.