From the Cheap Seats

The 26th of May is something of a red-letter day in the DVD release calendar. Whether this is because of a conjunction of the planets in the far-distant heavens or some sinister international conspiracy of art-house DVD labels, I don’t know. But whatever the reason, there’s a whole bunch of films released that day which are surely of interest to the discerning sort of person who shops at MovieMail.

For instance, Masters of Cinema release Akasen Chitai + Yokihi, their final double bill of late-period Mizoguchi films (any chance of some early ones, gents?) The BFI drop four films. First, the long-awaited (by me, at least) release of A Cottage on Dartmoor. Then there’s A Walk With Love and Death, a John Huston project rescued from limbo and happily restored to polite society.

You can – and frankly should – also get your hands on Lubitsch’s final masterpiece, the droll delight that is Cluny Brown. And then there’s another long-awaited (by me etc etc) British film, Radio On. Last year’s Palme d’Or winner 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days – harrowing, outstanding – is made available by the good folk at Artificial Eye, while Tartan give us Chan-Wook Park’s I’m a Cyborg (But That’s OK.) And I haven’t mentioned collections gathering work by Paul Verhoeven and Andrzej Wajda. Nor things like Bandit Queen. Phew!

If that were everything, it would be a good week indeed. But there’s more. Right at the bottom of the page is what might be the pick of the litter: They Made Me A Fugitive. Not, perhaps, the most celebrated title but one that really does deserve to be better know. Even if it were not a good film (which, incidentally, it is), it would be of interest because it’s directed by Alberto Cavalcanti.

As the name might suggest, Cavalcanti wasn’t from round these parts. Born in Brazil, he arrived in Blighty after a spell in France working with the likes of Renoir. He threw his lot in with the documentary movement – he supervised Night Mail – before being headhunted by Ealing Studios to work for them. His most widely seen work is Dead of Night – he handled the linking scenes and the best story (Michael Redgrave and his dummy) but it’s Went the Day Well that is the masterpiece.

I included Went The Day Well on my ‘alternative’ list of best British films last year but frankly, it deserves to be hovering near the more orthodox accounts of our national cinema too. (Incidentally, I wanted to include Radio On on that list but it wasn’t available on DVD at the time of writing. Now that it is, it can take the place of The Offence.) It’s an astoundingly brutal film considering it’s supposed to be a wartime morale booster and it made me a Cavalcanti devotee.

They Made Me a Fugitive isn’t quite as brutal, or rather, its brutality manifests itself in different ways. It doesn’t have the same inexorable forward momentum as Went The Day Well; the pace is just a little more relaxed. But more even than its predecessor, it has contempt for the politeness of British cinema and little hypocrisies of society. It’s an unflinching film: women are beaten, drugs are smuggled (at least I assume it’s drugs, not actually sherbet, as the gang-leader claims). The police aren’t infallible.

And for a film made in 1947, it offers a very unflattering portrait of the home-coming heroes. Trevor Howard is the titular ‘Me’: Clem Morgan, ex-RAF, ex-POW and finding it hard to adjust to life on civvie street. He drinks too much; he misses the excitement – so he gets involved with the titular ‘They’: some nasty black-marketeers.

But Clem isn’t totally without scruple, which rubs the headman Narcy (Griffith Jones) up the wrong way. Narcy’s also taken a shine to Clem’s lady-friend, so when a copper gets killed during one of their raids, Narcy frames Clem and lets him face the music – breaking rocks on Dartmoor – leaving Narcy free to make his moves. Naturally Clem escapes, and revenge is high on the agenda.

What’s most remarkable about They Made Me A Fugitive is just how close it is to the contemporary American crime films that would subsequently become known as Film Noir. We often talk of British Noir – Brighton Rock, Odd Man Out and the like – but while they share certain common elements with the American films, their concerns are ultimately different. They Made Me A Fugitive is the real thing, something that’s in sympathy with the aims and ambitions of the very best Noir. It could have been produced by RKO or Monogram.

Except, had it been made in America, I dare say the production code might have had a few suggestions to make about the film. I can’t imagine they’d be too happy about the grim vignette in which Clem shelters with a woman who begs him to kill her alcoholic husband. And they’d have probably exploded when they saw the conclusion, which openly laughs at the conventions of the happy ending. To say more is to spoil it but it’s safe to say that you won’t predict the ultimate resolution.

As an outsider, Cavalcanti saw a different Britain than the natives. Coming from the documentary tradition, he was interested in telling the truth as he saw it. This is a very squalid Britain, sordid and grim. Indeed, I can’t think of another film from that era – or even for another a couple of decades – that showed this country in such a bad light; it paints a very different portrait of austerity Britain than we’re used to.

It’s a tough picture, pretty much the diametric opposite of the film that made Trevor Howard’s name, Brief Encounter. It’s enough to confirm Cavalcanti as a major filmmaker, one deserving of much more attention than he currently receives. I’ve seen very little of his work (which spanned three continents, at least) but even if the rest is bobbins, he made at least two bona-fide masterpieces.

I don’t doubt that there’ll be a shed load of titles in your shopping basket on May 26th but if you’ve got room for one more, then it’s only £7.99. It’s not much to see a master at work.