I have wanted for a while to see this now "rare" British noir effort because I have heard so much about it--the controversy it stirred up, the sex, the violence, and so on (you can find all about that elsewhere). Saw it just the other night on TCM. Other reviews have correctly pointed out its (hardly surprising) acute awareness of social class. A preoccupation never very far away in British film, as indeed in British culture more generally. This can be a good thing, or a bad, depending on the treatment. One thing that American films have always tended to do--with many excellent exceptions, though most tellingly, from Hollywood's earliest years--is pussyfoot around questions of class (disclosure: I'm a Brit, resident in the US for twenty years-- so I can say this much: don't believe anyone who tells you that, in contradistinction to stuffy old Britain, the US is a refreshingly "classless" society. That is, as they say back "home," rubbish). The chief problem here is the attempt to make a British copy of an American noir. It doesn't work. Much better when the British stuck to British themes in British locales with British accents. Trevor Howard's "I Became a Criminal" is a far superior work for instance--as is the screen adaptation of Graham Greene's "Brighton Rock." Dassin's British set "Night and the City" is also streets ahead. Having said that, the film is competently directed, and is eminently watchable (if also instantly forgettable). You won't be wanting to watch it again and again, like perhaps you might Wilder's Double Indemnity or Curtiz's Mildred Pierce.
