The Blue Lamp 1950 Original treatment by Jan Read and Ted Willis, screenplay by T E B Clarke, directed by Basil Dearden. I've been picking up random Basil Dearden films and occasionally getting around to watching them. This I just got today and I decided to plop it on. Turned out I was quite happy to have picked it up.
Jack Warner plays PC Dixon and would go on to play PC Dixon in the 1955 TV series Dixon Of Dock Green. He would play the part for 21 years, he was 80 years old when he stopped. Sadly most of the 400 plus episodes were wiped by the BBC. No one was making audio recordings of those shows and it's doubtful that the BBC is going to make animated versions. You can see the few random episodes left on YouTube if you go look.
In The Blue Lamp Dixon is nearing retirement when he offers a young constable a place to stay. Jimmy Hanley plays the young man, he had been in a couple of films with Jack Warner, Holiday Camp and Here Come The Huggetts. Holiday Camp is quite good and worth a look. The Huggetts trilogy that followed is a bit more light weight but still worth a gander.
Dirk Bogart is a young hoodlum who pals around with a guy called Spud. They rob people and places and they have a general disregard for others. They're disrespected by the local villains for their use of violence and menace. Dirk has a 17 year old girlfriend who moves in with him. He recruits her to work in a theater the gang wants to rob. The night of the robbery PC Dixon confronts Dirk as he's exiting the robbery scene. Dirk fires the gun and Dixon goes down, he would later die. The police step up the investigation. Dirk and his girlfriend slowly fall apart as the investigation draws closer and closer. It's only a matter of time before the Yard can slip the noose around Dirk's neck and he's already feeling it tighten.
There's plenty of interesting characters and there's a good cast to really bring them to life. You might know some of them: Robert Flemyng, Bernard Lee, Peggy Evans, Bruce Seton and Clive Morton where the ones I knew. Their stages are the streets around the Padding Green Police Station, the film makers were given access to the station and even parts of Scotland Yard. There's a nice short film in the Bonus material that compares the locations in the film to the modern day locations. Many of the buildings in the area have gone over the years but there's still lots left.
I really enjoyed the movie despite being a bit of a police fantasy. There were many problems with the police force at the time, by the mid 70s much of it was revealed to the totally unsurprised public. I watched the Kino Lorber DVD and it looked quite nice. There's a couple commentaries that proved to be interesting, that location featurette, a nice BBC radio essay and 3 trailers.
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