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Powerful

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

A good deal of British film noir style suspense is generated in I BECAME A CRIMINAL (U.S.A. title: THEY MADE ME A FUGITIVE) starring TREVOR HOWARD as an ex-RAF pilot who becomes a bored civilian and falls in with a racketeering gang shortly after the end of WWII.GRIFFITH JONES is the sinister, rough and tough leader of the gang who decides to set Howard up for the murder of a policeman during an escape from the cops. Howard spends some time in prison before breaking out and going all out for revenge by returning to London for a confrontation with Jones' gang.While the story itself is nothing original, it's done with such style and flair for this kind of grim material, the B&W photography giving realistic glimpses of post-war London on the gritty side.SALLY GRAY is very effective as the woman who helps Howard and believes in his innocence. The supporting players register strongly as individual characters.The final shoot-out is a bit too frenzied for my taste, extending for quite awhile before the villains are disposed of. Despite this, the ending remains downbeat with just a glimmer of hope that some day Gray will be able to prove her man has been railroaded and is innocent of the murder charge for killing a policeman.Well worth viewing if you like suspenseful, brisk stories of this genre with dialog that is strong and forceful. While this bears no relation to the John Garfield film, THEY MADE ME A CRIMINAL, its plot outline does bear a strong resemblance to the Burt Lancaster thriller, KISS THE BLOOD OFF MY HANDS with Joan Fontaine helping Lancaster elude the pursuing authorities while on the run.

Not for the first time and most certainly not for the last I find I've been watching a different film to that seen by the majority of posters. The most blatant ineptness is the plotting. Consider: Having established that he is averse to peddling drugs, new gang-member, Trevor Howard is framed by gang leader Griffith Jones; here's how he does it; he goes with his gang on a robbery and waits in the car with the driver as Howard and some others enter the building. After a few minutes Jones smashes the case housing the burglar alarm whilst Howard and the others are still inside. The police arrive within minutes and Jones's driver runs one of them, a constable, down. NOW, wait for this: The VERY NEXT SCENE is in a prison where Howard, who has miraculously been captured, tried and sentenced entirely off screen, is serving a sentence for murder. That's not enough for this finely-crafted screenplay, not by a long shot (or even a close up) because the NEXT SCENE has Howard on the run having somehow contrived to escape without even planning to at least not in our presence. When writing is as sloppy as that no one has much chance of coming out of it ahead of the game. As Narcy, the gang leader Griffith Jones obviously enrolled for a term or two in the Charles Laughton School of Ham and if Trevor Howard and Sally Gray are adequate the rest of the cast wouldn't be out of place in Tod Browning's Freaks. So Dire It's Good.

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!

The truth of the matter is that they did a bang-up job in emulating American noir and gangster type films. Why not, the American stuff was going great guns on that side of the pond.This was pretty heavy stuff for 1947. References to cocaine, brutality towards women, and such goodies are noticeable here. Also noticeable is the noir type anti-hero magnificently portrayed by Trevor Howard, and lots and I do mean lots of shadows.A rooftop scene was undoubtedly the prototype and inspiration for later movies such as To Catch A Thief.Don't confuse this with the earlier Hollywood movie, They Made Me A Criminal, which featured John Grfield and the Dead End Kids. There's no similarity between those two films.