The Blue Lamp (1950)

Directed by

Basil Dearden

Genre

crime film

Country

United Kingdom

Runtime

1h 24m

Rated

PG

Rating

6.6 of 10 from 63 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A veteran police constable mentors a new officer while a young criminal gets pulled into a life of crime. The story shows a day in the life of the police and the underworld in post-war London.

grittytenseearneststarksombergroundednoir-ishmethodical

What happens

The Blue Lamp is a 1950 British police procedural film directed by Basil Dearden and starring Jack Warner as PC Dixon, Jimmy Hanley as newcomer PC Mitchell and Dirk Bogarde as criminal Tom Riley. The title refers to the blue lamps that traditionally hang outside British police stations. The film became the inspiration for the 1955–1976 TV series Dixon of Dock Green, in which Warner continued to play PC Dixon until he was 80 years old (even though Dixon is murdered in the original film). The screenplay was written by Ealing regular T. E. B. Clarke, who had been a war reserve constable. The film is an early example of the social realism films that emerged later in the 1950s and 1960s, sometimes using a partial documentary-style approach. There are also cinematic influences of the film noir genre, particularly in underworld scenes featuring Bogarde, such as the pool rooms and in and around the theatre, making deliberate use of genre trademarks such as slow-moving low camera angles and stark lighting. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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