How 2 Fugitives from Justice gave us 2 of Britain’s greatest films

The good doctor asks felicitously after his patient’s health.

“Excellent” replies the young American who also happens to be chained to his bed. The immaculately dressed doctor moves over to the bathroom in the bombed out house and pours the contents of a hot-water bottle into the bath. It is 1948 and US émigré Edward Dmytryk is directing Obsession in post-war London. Loosely based upon the real life acid bath murders the story finds Robert Newton playing an obsessively jealous husband who kidnaps a US serviceman after discovering the latter ensconced with his wife - played by the hugely talented but now largely forgotten Sally Gray.

This intriguing film forms part of The Morbid Cycle– a clutch of previously little known films that explore the darker side of life as the country re-emerged into peace.

Dmytryk was recuperating in London after spending 6 months in a US penitentiary for refusing to co-operate with the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).

Meanwhile over the pond in Hollywood, Connecticut- born Jules Dassin’s career had never been better His prison drama Brute Force had catapulted him from B-feature director to an A-lister.

In order to get back to Hollywood Dmytryk, who had been secretly co-operating with HUAC, suddenly announced that that his fellow director Dassin was in fact a fully paid-up member of the communist party. So whilst Dmytryk was leisurely booking a first class flight to LA poor Dassin was scrambling on board the first flight out in the opposite direction. Poetic licence dictates that their Stratocruisers must have crossed somewhere over the Atlantic.

It didn’t take long for Dassin to get work in London. With Richard Widmark on board and together with a host of home-grown talent he busied himself with Night and the City which turned out to be the definitive British film noir. Largely eschewing the studio, in favour of war damaged locations he produced a perfect depiction of low life crime in 1940’s London. Tiring of this pursuit, he hopped across the channel to the land of his forebears and made the legendary heist movie Rififi. Then to Greece and a comedic re-make of Rififi, called Topkai with his new wife Melina Mercouri. It did well at the box office but the critics gave it the thumbs down, which marked the beginning of the end of a glittering career.

Things weren’t much better for Dmytryk in sunny Hollywood. The director of the much admired film noir portrait of anti-semitism, Crossfire, was now reduced to directing a British-financed western Shalako, starring Sean Connery and Brigitte Bardot.

Oh how the mighty had fallen. But thanks to the extreme right winger Senator Joe McCarthy and his HUAC we in the UK now have two great movies in our National Pantheon of Cinema, and it is right to say that we definitely benefited at the expense of others. Without America’s paranoid scare of reds under the beds we would never have had, Cy Endfield’s Zulu, Joseph Losey’s The Servant, and can you believe, the 50’s ITV series Robin Hood?

So if, or rather when a HUBAC (House of Un-British Activities Committee) is set up, and you are ordered to appear, and are asked the time-honoured question, “Are you, or have you ever been a member of the Middlesex Law Society?”, you must answer “No, but, actually I could name a few names and now you mention it, I just might be able to throw in a couple of fellow travellers to boot.” Then do a bunk to Panama city where according to Canoe Man you can buy a cosy 2-bedroom flat for £30,000.00.

Now that the dreaded Oscar’s are upon us once more, my thoughts turn to which films in my opinion were worth the inflated entrance fee. How about:-

Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon, Jacques Audiard’s A Prophet , Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank, Armando Iannucci’s In the Loop, Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr Fox.

But my favourite film of the year was made in Japan in 1960 by Yasujiro Ozu. Late Autumn - a film about match-making - is now regarded as a masterpiece. A must see.Out on DVD from the 24^th April if you can’t get along to the BFI Southbank to see it in its full glory on the big screen By the way, few Kleenex just might come in handy.