The Servant (1963)

The Servant (1963) is a Joseph Losey classic British film noir and classic film noir powerplay domestic psychological class structure descent into anarchy and manipulative homme fatale style upper class versus lower class classy Limey nervy upstairs downstairs thriller of deceit and overt and latent sexual frustration and erotic guilt and loss of control and bisexual class hatred and manifestation of male self hatred starring James Fox, Dirk Bogarde (as Hugo Barrett), Sarah Miles, Wendy Craig, Catherine Lacey, Richard Vernon, Patrick Magee, Harold Pinter LOL, Dorothy Bromiley as girl outside Phone Box — great scene that — Johnny Dankworth — and as another fine musical treat — Davy Graham as himself. Happen to be a fan.

Young and Innocent (1937)

Young and Innocent (1937) is an Alfred Hitchcock body on the beach female seeker hero wrongly accused man police procedural murder romance on the run sometime slapstick, sometime farcical, sometime Anglo-silly, Olde Englishe village life never leave the dog behind car in a collapsing mine special effects and tasteless blackface orchestra twitching man circumstantial pursuit and evasion thriller in the mold and style of many of Alfred Hitchcock's very well known pictures, and a minor 1930s classic most renowned for the wonderful but blackface focused crane shot of the decade and starring Nova Pilbeam, Torin Thatcher, Basil Radford, Derrick De Marney as Robert Tisdall lol, Percy Marmont, Edward Rigby, Mary Clare, John Longden as Inspector Kent . . . and George Curzon as "Guy", aka "the guy" I suspect.

The Small Voice (1948)

The Small Voice (1948) is a lousy husband returning veteran home invasion British hostage classic tension and confrontation low budget escaped prisoners jeopardy film noir drama with Valerie Hobson, Howard Keel and James Donald. 

Blackout (1950)

Blackout (1950) is a British recuperating crash victim voiceover wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time case of mistaken identity missing airman currency exchange racket Hitchcock-style switcheroo amateur sleuth film noir goose chase boarding rooms and corridors darkness and blinds | blindness mystery adventure with Maxwell Reed, Michael Brennan, Dinah Sheridan, and is a part of the Robert S. Baker Limey noir oeuvre which is a small oeuvre that will be noted, but still holding a place in Limey noir canonical collection and viewing, and is of course a must-see stop, for they are all must see stops, in the viewership of the complete collection of work by the favourite of the weblog Patric Dooonan.

Cash on Demand (1961)

Cash on Demand (1961) is a Limey Christmas home invasion based on a play heist telephone claustrophobic encounter and minimal set design Quentin Lawrence paranoia threat and snow and rather low key film noir, starring Peter Cushing as a signature performance fastidious bank manager put under pressure to rob his own safe under pressure from a caddish caper style gentleman's thief, and as such very almost adheres to the theatrical Aristotelian unities.

The Upturned Glass (1947)

The Upturned Glass (1947) is a British flashback and voiceover brain surgeon and love affair murder madness and suicide sanity-searching wicked lady and high quality limey 1940s criminologist revenge introspective and calculated insanity intriguer with star of the show James Mason, and Rosamund John, Pamela Kellino and Ann Stephens.

The Long Arm (1956)

The Long Arm (1956) is a Charles Frend British procedural heist and safe-crackin criminal thriller film noir detective motor car noir in which the central intrigue revolves around methodically executed burglaries, the circumvention of high-security safes, femme fatale, last chance saloon, tomorrow's my kid's birthday and the meticulous pursuit of the perpetrator by representatives of law enforcement, inflected throughout with the stylistic and thematic undertones the firm characteristic of the limey noir style and canon, including snarking adjacent cops, domestic bottles of beer and sobriety, silent-style motion action burglary and the deliberate repurposing of a motor vehicle into a mechanism of lethality.

The League of Gentlemen (1960)

De la saison Basil Dearden, c’est le moment absolument suprême, certainement l’un des moments forts.

The League of Gentlemen (1960) is a Basil Dearden criminal melodrama disgruntled and disgraced returning veteran multiple lousy husband heist and caper movie from the cusp of the sixties and the final gasp of the fifties before the post war spirit collapsed into an English society as irony as empire ends style of comedy noir starring Jack Hawkins, Nigel Patrick, Roger Livesey, Richard Attenborough, Bryan Forbes, Kieron Moore, Terence Alexander, Norman Bird, Robert Coote, Melissa Stribling, and Nanette Newman.

A Place to Go (1963)

Une étape intéressante et moins connue de la saison Basil Dearden combine le « kitchen sink » et le film noir.

A Place to Go (1963) is a British Basil Dearden rare kitchen sink and crime combo feature teenage pop hit social commentary and 1960s reconstruction heist and youth dating and romance drama starring Bernard Lee, Rita Tushingham, and Michael Sarne. 

Pink String and Sealing Wax (1945)

Pink String and Sealing Wax (1945) is a British historical poisoning and lousy alcoholic husband murdering Victorian age pharmacist daft dreaming son and local intrigue and femme fatale drama with Googie Withers, Mervyn Johns and Gordon Jackson, in a pent up family story of murder, reserve, calculation and feral femme folie in a beautifully set studio recreation of an 1880s Brighton agay with m class tension, social climbing and gossip.

Assassin For Hire (1951)

Assassin For Hire (1951) is a contract killer stricken with remorse murder sleuth and plod procedural family hitman Limey British film noir with Sydney Tafler voicing an uncomfortably cliched and inappropriate Italian accent, a secret life or identity noir, in which, pretending to be a rare stamp dealer, a Tafler man supports his wife, and in an embarrasmenta of mama-style Italiante clichés, his musically talented younger brother, lives a secret nocturnal life as a hitman, nipping out of the same card game at the same café, to bump off unworthy Limey marks.

Conspirator (1949)

Conspirator (1949) is a double agent British espionage and early Cold War Soviet versus England romance and intrigue anti-USSR propaganda spy thriller starring Elizabeth Taylor, Robert Taylor, Honor Blackman and Robert Flemyng, in a Victor Saville directed tale of female belittlement and abuse in the honourable name of spying for the Soviets, while protecting the integrity of the Brits.

Round it thusly spins, not so fast, but with a fairly interesting admixture of fog and domesticity, with some cold and lonely English wetland landscapes to break up the misery.

The Secret Partner (1961)

The Basil Dearden season addresses the early sixties with one of his noirnormative middle class mystery concoctions.

The Secret Partner (1961) is a Basil Dearden dockside dental blackmail investigative managerial executive officer heist and mystery man in the night early sixties Limey British film noir adventure thriller with Stuart Granger, Haya Harareet, Bernard Lee, with Hugh Burden, Norman Bird and Lee Montague. 

Violent Playground (1958)

The Basil Dearden season continues, presenting many noir-adjacent films that are more the by product of the medium than its core element, dealing with teenage, social and criminal problems and the police effort to present social reason for the increasing use of machine guns by school students.

Violent Playground (1958) is a Basil Dearden teenage tearaway race relations British battle of wills between a Liverpool Juvenile Liaison officer and a young and dangerous pyromaniac rock n roll social problem picture movie response to the alarmist, hugely successful teen melodrama The Blackboard Jungle (US, 1955) James Kennaway scripted inspired by an actual experiment that was carried out in Liverpool in 1949 late period Limey noir crime and civic anxiety fusion and social confusion picture starring Stanley Baker, Anne Heywood, David McCallum, Peter Cushing, John Slater and Clifford Evans.

Pool of London (1951)

The notion of a Basil Dearden season remains an unexpected and quietly subversive curatorial gesture.

Pool of London (1951) is a post war race relations smuggling offbeat classic British film noir customs officers and river police dockyard and barroom melodramatic crime story in a realistic setting procedural race against time thriller of the river underworld, so declared, and which is of note for portraying the first interracial relationship in a British film.

Yield to the Night (1956)

Yield to the Night (1956) which is also known by its US release title Blonde Sinner is a classic film noir Limey death row female criminality flashback and voiceover murder exploitation lousy husband prison movie with a mean prison warden trope and revenge thriller element and with a confused fixation on women's legs, and is most overall best enjoyed as a incredible and felt performance from Diana Dors, and showing as it does the descent to madness through lousy husbandry and mannishness in general, was directed by J. Lee Thompson, and includes many sympathetic character acting performances and otherwise strong supporting acting from all and among others Yvonne Mitchell, Geoffrey Keen, Michael Ripper and Marie Ney, and Michael Craig as the lousy Jim Lancaster.

Blackmail (1929)

Blackmail (1929) is an Alfred Hitchcock 1920s police procedural attempted rape and murder in self defence classic British film noir hit sound movie production based on a play and brutally blackly comic cinematic late dip towards higher modernism in the form and its technical prowess as it entered the 1930s, and this film which is clear evidence of the Hitchcockian it is also at its height horrific.

Apologies if the film noir canon is to be legally formatted in the 1920s, the thought is not tuned into the key features of the style, so it is unusual to call it a classic, and yet unanimous support from the Film Noir Board in fact classify it, classicify it if you can, that is the verdict.

Cast A Dark Shadow (1955)

Cast A Dark Shadow (1955) is a psychopath targeting elderly widows black widower greed and murder English film noir suspenser tale of polished homicide with English cuppa tea undertones and dark shadows of psycho-style fifties persecution and cunning styled as a Limey film noir tale of manipulation and Freudian hang-ups drawing room crime thriller, directed by Lewis Gilbert and starring Dirk Bogarde, Margaret Lockwood, Kay Walsh and Robert Flemyng.

Sapphire (1959)

Nobody requested a Basil Dearden season but when it came it was as welcomed as that of any other noir  favourite. So let's continue the season with this Dearden diamond in the rough.

Sapphire (1959) is a Basil Dearden police procedural violence against women cops playing with ladies underwear British limey deep racial tensions and civil rights and exceptionally rare passing-as-white Black British experience racism and bigotry murder mystery film noir starring Nigel Patrick, Yvonne Mitchell, Michael Craig, and Paul Massie. Progressive to a degree that borders on provocation for its historical moment, the film squarely addresses the everyday racism inflicted upon West Indian immigrants in London while anatomizing the buried insecurities, unspoken fears, and quietly festering hostilities of ordinary people when confronted with those they have racialized as other.

The Square Ring (1953)

The actuated conception of a Basil Dearden season feels anomalous within conventional retrospectives. But here it is nonethesame.

The Square Ring (1953) is a Basil Dearden mugs' game boxing single evening at a cheap stadium clinches and clichés portmanteau style based on a play British film noir long lost era of Limey filmmaking melodrama in which a trembling neophyte is hurled into ritualized violence opposite a decaying former champion clawing desperately for one final gasp of relevance, while a hysteria-stricken wife issues ultimatums from the domestic front, the corrupt machinery of a backstage fix grinds unseen, and the camera assaults the viewer with feverish close-ups of ringsiders baying for blood and entire rows of spectators convulsing in grotesque pantomime, their fists punching the air as if possessed by the fight itself.