Ex serviceman Trevor Howard (Clem) is bored now that the war is over and agrees to join a criminal gang headed up by spiv boss Griffith Jones (Narcy) who peddles whatever contraband comes in – cigarettes, meat and even sherbet. I love sherbet. It seems a funny thing to ban, though. Anyway, Howard is enraged by the fact that this sherbet is being peddled unlawfully. He obviously feels for the sweetshop traders. His stand on sherbet causes a rift with Jones. Jones has plans for Howard. Not good ones.There are a few good things going for this film including the ending which wouldn't be allowed in Hollywood in which the dialogue as delivered by Jones is completely unexpected and standout. There is also a memorable sequence with housewife Vida Hope (Mrs Fenshaw) who wants a favour of Howard in return for sheltering him whilst he is on the run. Vida is really freaky! The cast are a mish-mash. I didn't think any of the women convinced and I couldn't relate to any of the male cast. Trevor is OK in the lead. And what is it with the names of the gang? I thought one guy was called 'Sophie' for most of the film. And the lead gangster is just one letter away from being called 'Nancy'. But I think that falls in line with British gangsters of the time – note 'Pinkie' from "Brighton Rock" made in the same year. Of course, the famous 'nancy-boy' Kray twins popped up later in 1960s London.The film is OK but watch out for the fake fights. The rubber milk bottles that are hurled about and bounce off people's heads contrast sharply with the sequence when Sally Gray (Sally) gets beaten up. The violence towards women in this film is disturbing and once again, the dialogue as delivered by Jones is menacing during these sequences. Overall, it's not quite up there with the best.

Trevor Howard (Clem Morgan), Sally Gray (Sally), Griffith Jones (Narcy), Rene Ray (Cora), Mary Merrall (Aggie), Charles Farrell (Curley), Michael Brennan (Jim), Jack McNaughton (Soapy), Cyril Smith (Bert), Maurice Denham (Fenshaw), Vida Hope (Mrs Fenshaw), John Penrose (Shawney), Phyllis Robbins (Olga), Eve Ashley (Ellen), Sam Kydd (Eddie), Diana Graves (May), Beatrice Varley (farmer's wife), Sebastian Cabot (club proprietor), Lyn Evans (truck driver), Peter Bull (Fidgity Phil), Ballard Berkeley (Inspector Rockliffe), Gordon Court (sergeant), Derek Birch (Constable Murray).Director: CAVALCANTI. Screenplay: Noel Langley. Based on the novel A Convict Has Escaped by Jackson Budd. Photography: Otto Heller. Film editor: Margery Saunders. Art director: Andrew Mazzei. Camera operators: Robert Day, Gus Drisse. Assistant cameramen: Gerry Fisher, Walter Lassally. Music composed by Marius F. Gaillard, played by the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by John Hollingsworth. Wardrobe supervisor: Dorothy Sinclair. Assistant directors: Richard Leeman, Guy Hamilton. Associate producer: Noel Langley. Producer: Nat Bronstein. (The U.S.A.'s Kino DVD and the U.K.'s Odeon DVD both rate 10/10).An R.A. Shipman Production, released through Warner Brothers Pictures on 24 June 1947 in the U.K. and on 6 March 1948 in the U.S.A. (where it was re-titled as "I Became a Criminal" and cut down to 78 minutes). 99 minutes. COMMENT: Although this movie has a considerable cult reputation, I didn't think it as powerful as some other British noir entries, such as It Always Rains on Sunday, Pink String and Sealing Wax and even Trevor Howard's own vehicle, The Clouded Yellow. The problem is that noir really needs a distinct hero that the audience is rooting for. In this one, Howard is not a clean-cut central figure, but, as his character actually admits on screen, he's a criminal with a conscience. Nonetheless, even though I would rate the movie a little lower on the British noir scale, it's still a gripping, unforgettable experience. Griffith Jones, for instance, makes a really nasty heavy, while the girls – Sally Gray, René Ray and Phyllis Robins – deliver strongly. All the same, I thought the most impressive acting came from Vida Hope as a resourceful murderess and Michael Brennan as a really evil, conscienceless thug who managed to put even Griffith Jones' Narcy in the shade.

This one is a damned curious British noir (some, including myself, would generally have that as an oxymoron, but I'm comfortable with the term here, as it really is precisely tapping into post-war malaise and other very recognisable Yankee genre tropes). Nice dialogue too, "He's not even a respectable crook, he's cheap, rotten, after-the-war trash" describing baddie Narcy (short for Narcissus after the Greek myth, well played by Griffith Jones).Wild child RAF ace Clem (Trevor Howard) is too bored with civvy street after all the shoot-em-ups, Immelmans and ack-ack show. So he decides to try his arm at crookery and ends up with Narcy and his gang, Narcy needs a guy with class. Only things don't go so well so Narcy hangs a frame on Clem and takes his popsy. "What's 'e in for?" "Manslaughter - killing a cop" "That's not manslaughter, that's fumigation".The rest of the film is the revenge story. It's all nice and dark up to a point, but gets rather too intricate for its own good and sprawls a bit, ending up feeling twenty minutes too long at 1 hr 40 mins. Due to the times there's not much scope for the violence that some scenes in this film pretty much demand according to the dictates of logic. The lack of the effect half of cause and effect makes the climactic scene absurd, and actually had almost the entire theatre at the Edinburgh Film Festival's revival screening in giggles. There's room for humour in a film like this, Hitchcock showed that well, but I think Cavalcanti over-eggs the pudding in the manner of Jon Farrow's American noir of 1951, His Kind Of Woman. The humour came in as a step change rather than equally spread in an even-toned master work. I may of course be in the position of being kind and assuming that the humour was intentional.

Well, what have we got here?We've got a 1946/7 London - rainy, smog- and fog-ridden - swarming with sweaty, sadistic small-time black marketeers, hag-faced toothless harridan prostitutes, rat faced squealers, slimy grasses, heart-of-gold cashmere-wearing Judys, squalid, smoky dockside boozers, and bobbies in mackintoshes and capes (told you it was raining) getting run over and bashed over the coconut.Enter ex-RAF Clem Morgan (Trevor Howard). He wants a bit of action with a gang led by sharp, smoothie, sadistic, snooker-playing knuckle-duster wielding Narcy (Narcissus)(Griffith Jones) - but he baulks at their drug (sherbert!) dealing side. So he's framed into a cop murder - very heavy stuff in immediate post-war England. But this isn't The Blue Lamp - it's nearer Jules Dassin's famous Night and the City and precedes both.As well as a crackling script by Noel Langley we've got a runaway fugitive we know is innocent, more bobbies, more rain, and a head-butting, knife-throwing, rooftop-climbing finale.A great British noir sadly often overlooked. See it!