On the Night of the Fire

Debate and confusion will always exist about when film noir starts and finishes, or if it should only appertain to one country. Importantly it will always be in the eye of the beholder, more so since many of the film makers back in the day didn't know they were making films that would soon become a film making style phenomenon.

On the Night of the Fire (AKA: The Fugitive) has everything a film noir lover could want. Directed by Brian Desmond Hurst and adapted from F.L. Green's novel of the same name, film stars Ralph Richardson, Diana Wynyard, Romney Brent, Mary Clare and Henry Oscar. Plot has Richardson as Will Kobling, a Tyneside barber in the North East of England, who after spying an open window at the local mill, lets temptation get the better of him and climbs in to steal the money that will hopefully end his family's financial woes. On such impulsive decisions does life alter...

From the off the pic is exuding a period of working class Britain from days of yore! It's all brickwork and cobbled streets, of musky docks, gin houses, beat street coppers and sweat stained barber shops where graft and honest toil is the order of the day. Magnificently hovering over proceedings is a swirling score by Miklós Rózsa (Double Indemnity/Criss Cross) and Germanic cinematography by Günther Krampf (Pandora's Box/The Ghoul), with these in full effect and director Hurst firmly dealing in a mood of pessimism, this really becomes a picture not complying with any sort of code ethics.

The characterisations are superbly dubious, story is awash with folk who are quick to turn on a sixpence to meet their ends. There's hysterical alcoholics, shifty loners, a business man who is not beyond expecting sexual favours to pay off a debt. Added into the pot is murder, blackmail and the corruption of someone we could quite easily sympathise with, all this and the fire that smoothers the town in smog, water and floating burnt cinders. The backdrop is set in noirish stone, Richardson is superb, and then the devilish hand of noir fate steps in to not cheat lovers of the film making medium.

A bit stagy at times and the likes of Mary Clare are too hysterical with their acting - where the director should have reined it in - but small complaints for anyone interested in British Proto-Noir before it even had a name. 8/10

Will Kobling, a hard working barber, succumbs to a temptation that so many of us might given the right circumstances and sets in motion a devastating train of events. Brian Desmond-Hurst was not a great director but a very capable one and keeps the momentum going. The fickleness of the mob and the way in which gossip spreads like wildfire are very well depicted. This would be a far lesser film however and would not be nearly as effective were it not for the presence of Ralph Richardson as Kobling and Diana Wynyard as his adoring wife. They are both magnificent. Excellent cinematography by Gunther Krampf but the score by Miklos Rozsa is far too biblical. Judging by the preponderance of Cockneys one finds it hard to believe it is set on Tyneside!

This film is brilliantly directed by the largely forgotten Irish director, Brian Desmond Hurst, and brilliantly performed by its entire cast. But it is largely a 'downer', with its plot of the unremitting grinding of the wheels of Fate. It was filmed in 1939 and released in the spring of 1940. With entry into war, the British public no longer wanted tragedies but 'feel-good films', and they must have tried to forget this film, which was too much like reality to be comfortable. This film is really more like the post-War 'noir' films of America, where doom awaits. It must have been the last of the gritty 1930s British film dramas before the ultimate grit of the Blitz hit in 1940. The film is fascinating in many respects. It shows in intimate detail the life of a working-class urban community in Britain, in those last pre-War moments before most such communities were wiped out forever by German bombs. There are many wonderful location shots of the docks and streets of such areas, later reduced to rubble. For much of the film, I struggled to figure out which part of old London near the docks this could be, and thought I recognised a street near the wharves of old Lambeth (near the reconstructed Globe Theatre) which was only finally demolished about 20 years ago. But towards the end of the film, we are shown a shot of the unmistakable railway bridge hurting northwards across the river into Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and I realized this film must have been meant to take place at Newcastle. But no one in the film has 'Geordie' accents (the unmistakable accent of Newcastle folk). They all speak like Londoners except for Sara Allgood, who does her best to suppress her Irish lilt (she was a famous actress from the old Abbey Theatre in Dublin whom Hurst had directed in his earlier films 'Irish Hearts' of 1934 and 'Riders to the Sea' of 1935.) The young Glynis Johns, aged 17 and already in her fifth film, appears as a fey maid in this film. But the central performances are those of Ralph Richardson and Diana Wynyard, as a couple faced with a terrible dilemma. Wynyard is often of the verge of screaming hysteria in this desperate tale, but her stiff upper lip triumphs. Richardson was perfect for these parts as an introspective and worried husband, and was what you might call 'a steady presence on screen'. His great ability was to stand with the camera on his face and suddenly, as we watch, achieve 'realization' of something, with a nervous narrowing and slight twitching of his eyes. Henry Oscar is marvellously creepy as a miser who sits counting his money alone in his shop at hight, while listening to records of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos. (The director makes good use of this, and a special shot featuring the gramophone, which is very effective, was later much copied by other directors.) This is an almost unbearably intense tragedy, thoroughly convincing, but it won't cheer you up, so be strong.

In 1930s Newcastle, if you worked in a bank, you could leave money unattended in an empty room and leave the window open. This was especially a good thing to do in a poor working-class area near the docks. We seem to have developed our ideas since then. Anyway, for this film, barber Ralph Richardson (Will) comes across this scenario and decides to go for it and pinch the money just sitting there inviting his attention. Well, he is now £100.00 richer. Nice one.

However, what is he going to do with his new wealth? Oh no, his wife Diana Wynyard (Kit) has got herself into debt by owing the local tailor Henry Oscar (Pillinger) for outfits so she can keep up appearances. She is being pressured for payment of debts and this is where the bulk of Richardson's wealth is absorbed. Typical - just when he was planning a happy life for his family, a woman has ruined it!

Thanks to a money laundering trail, the police put a watch on Oscar's movements which leads to bribery and murder.

The film is a character study of how things can go terribly wrong so easily for what is essentially a good man - Ralph Richardson. This is about his descent. The film has a good setting and story although it does occasionally drag in the 2nd half. It also contains a terribly over-the-top performance of a screaming woman that looks like Miriam Margolyes. Definitely a relative. We also get a young barber's apprentice who features quite prominently in the story and doesn't even get a mention in the credits. How unfair is that! He also has a strong cockney accent and taken with the other accents in the film, you would assume that this is set in London. Nope. It's Newcastle. Obviously before the Geordie accent was invented for the purposes of Reality TV shows.

I am not a specialist of British films from the thirties and forties, but this one, which I discovered at the French Cinémathèque in 1988, amazed me so much. It is a drama, truly tragic thriller drama starring a terrific Ralph Richardson, grabs you, holds you from the beginning till the end. I have always thought that Ralph Richardson had the same face as Michel Serrault, the French actor, who would also had been excellent in this kind of character. The scheme looks like a James Hadley Chase's novel with a lead desperate character who looks like you and me, and who slowly but surely becomes a murderer, because of his mone issues and a blackmailer. A greedy blackmailer. The tooic where audiences can't prevent to become full of empathy for the mai character, no matter what he does to survive. Outstanding British crime flick. By the way, speaking of British masterpieces fromt he forties, what a gem THE WICKED LADY, the Leslie Arliss's film, starring Margaret Lockwood in a kind of Gene Tierney in LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN.