Pool Of London is a 1951 British crime drama directed by Basil Dearden. Jack Whittingham and John Eldridge wrote the screenplay. The Pool of London is an area on the Thames that ships used to dock at, it started by Tower Bridge and extended to below Limehouse. It's all gone now, it closed down in the 60s, later it was urban renewed into luxury flats and places of interest, like the Design Museum. During the movie Tower Bridge and the Tower of London appear in a lot of background shots.
Bonar Colleano is a sailor on a merchant ship, he's pals with Earl Cameron, they often go out drinking together. Bonar is white and Earl is black. Bonar is also a petty smuggler. He's currently bringing in contraband in cigarette packages for a guy. He makes his latest delivery and finds his criminal pal has a new job for him. One that will pay £100, that's over £3000 today.
What Bonar doesn't know is the guy who's asking him to smuggle the item has hired some shitty criminals to rob a safe of diamonds. A simple slip up and they wind up killing the guard. They barely escape and the police are on their trail. The diamonds get to Bonar, his girlfriend, Moira Lister, gets him to open the package. It gets more and more complicated after the reveal but Basil keeps the pace and action at a nice pace that I really liked. A lot of the action takes place on the real streets of the dockland area.
Intertwined with the robbery is Earl's story, he meets a woman, they have a few encounters and there's a nice chemistry between the pair. Susan Shaw plays the woman, I'd just seen her in the Huggett's trilogy where she played one of the Huggett daughters. She's in The Intruder, I've seen that and enjoyed it, she also in Fire Maidens Of Outer Space and Carry On Nurse. Seen both but can't remember her in them, it been a while since I've seen them. In real life, Sarah married Bonar Colleano around 1954, they had a kid in 1955 and he died in a car crash in 1958. The IMDb bio says she never recovered and became an alcoholic. She passed away in 1978 with no money, the Rank Organization paid for her funeral. Earl on the other hand had a fairly long career, Pool Of London was his first film and his last credit was in 2013. Before starting in films he had been a radio announcer and acted in several theater productions. He's been in some great films, big and small, and plenty of TV. He's still alive at 102.
The movie is said to be the first British film to portray a mixed race relationship. Earl and Susan do a good job with a great script, they're believable characters you can root for, you can see the heartbreak when Earl walks away from Sarah near the end of the film. There's also a genuine bond between Earl and Bonar that plays out really well.
The DVD from Kino Lorber has a nice interview with Earl, well worth listening to, as is the commentary by Bryan Reesman. Plenty of info on the film, the actors and the area. There's a short tour of the Pool Of London area with film historian Richard Darre. The movie turned out to be a nice surprise and one I'm certain to watch again. I'd been keeping an eye out for films by Basil Dearden and I now have a few more to watch in stock.
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