They Made Me a Fugitive Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.5

They Made Me a Fugitive Blu-ray Movie Review

"Free enterprise" and a frame-job in post-war England.

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater August 1, 2012

Along with jazz and the short story, film noir is often seen as a distinctly American form, born from a coupling of hardboiled crime fiction and the shadowy visual Expressionism that German emigre directors like Fritz Lang and Robert Siodmak brought with them when they moved to Hollywood. But across the pond, English filmmakers were also churning out gritty chiaroscuro masterpieces. Carol Reed's The Third Man. John Boulting's Brighton Rock. Jules Dassin's Night and the City. Brit-noir tends to be damper, draftier, and less glamorous than its American counterpart—think wet cobblestone instead of hot asphalt—not to mention more affected by a sort of post-WWII melancholy, a wistful putting-the- pieces-back-together sadness.

Another great example is 1947's They Made Me a Fugitive—released in the U.S. as I Became a Criminal—from prolific but mostly forgotten director Alberto Cavalcanti, a Brazilian national who spent his most active years making films in France and the U.K. He's probably best known for the memorable ventriloquist section in the influential horror anthology Dead of Night, but he also did a Nicholas Nickleby adaptation, the musical Champagne Charlie, and even a few wartime propaganda films. With They Made Me a Fugitive, he crafted a tense and stylish thriller out some of the usual noir touchstones—underhanded frame-jobs and revenge served cold, cynical criminals and the hard- living dames who love them.

The film gets off to a cracking start, with a coffin mournfully unloaded from a hearse and carried into the Valhalla Road Funeral Parlor, which we quickly learn —when the coffin is opened, revealing hundreds of cigarette cartons inside—is actually a front for a black-market smuggling business. The leader of this "free-enterprise" operation is a spiv by the name of Narcy (Griffith Jones), short for Narcissus. The moniker fits; vain in a sharp suit, he's thoroughly ugly at the core, misogynistic and power-addled. "He's not even a respectable crook," one character says of him, "he's just cheap, rotten, after-the-war trash."

In need of a new point man, Narcy hires Clem Morgan—The Third Man's Trevor Howard, one of Britain's best character actors and brilliant here —a former Royal Air Force pilot who's been depressed and directionless and boozed-up since V-E Day. Clem takes the gig out of ennui, but when he discovers his boss is also dealing in narcotics—not just nylons, cigs, and whiskey—he decides he's "not that kind of crook" and wants out. Of course, by this point he knows too much, and Narcy callously frames him for the manslaughter of a cop, landing Clem in jail on a fifteen-year sentence.

Insult to injury, Clem's platinum-coiffed girlfriend Ellen (Eve Ashley) leaves him to become Narcy's gun moll. This, however, provokes Narcy's previous blonde, the chorus girl Sally (Sally Gray), to visit Clem in prison, offering to bring him exonerating evidence in the form of Soapy (Jim McNaughton), a lackey who knows the truth about the bobby's death but rightfully fears for his own life. The script, by Noel Langley—based on a Jackson Budd novel—has all the emotional angles expertly worked out, its characters and their motivations intersecting in myriad interesting ways.

Not patient enough to wait for the hand of justice to move, Clem busts out of the clink and goes on the lam, hoping to track down Narcy and treat him to some much-deserved comeuppance. The film's middle section is perhaps longer and less focused than it ought to be—Clem's stealthy journey through the countryside and back to London is not quite as gripping as the drama to come—but there is terrific scene here where our wronged protagonist slips surreptitiously into a rural home, only to be discovered by a frumpy housewife with a weird, what-the-hell-is-she-up-to demeanor. The woman feeds and clothes Clem, but in exchange, she wants him to kill her drunk of a husband. Clem's too good of a guy for that, though, and the woman does the deed herself, later pinning it on the escaped convict.

Meanwhile, Sally gets roughed up by a suspicious Narcy for visiting Clem in prison, a shockingly violent scene for the times. In a clever reverse shot, Narcy is reflected in his ex's dressing room mirror, which warps his face into a funhouse grotesquery, a revealing of the egomaniacal monster within. Describing the frenzied last act merely as a cat-and-mouse game is a bit too limiting considering the number of participants involved. Clem is after Soapy and Narcy. Narcy is after Clem and Soapy. Sally is in danger, Soapy is in hiding, and his wife Cora (Rene Ray) has been kidnapped. And then there are the police, playing all parties against one another. It's more of a cat-and-mouse-and-dog-and-cat-and-dogcatcher game.

The film's dramatic substance is matched by no small amount of style. Influential Czech cinematographer Otto Heller (Peeping Tom, The Ladykillers) drapes the picture in long noir shadows—see Narcy and a thug standing on a staircase, light filtering through the balusters—and Cavalcanti infuses the film with dark, off-kilter humor, like staging the climactic fight on a rooftop adorned with signage reading R.I.P., a wink-and-a- nudge at what's to come. But what really makes the film is its whip-sharp spiv-speak dialogue, from "The whole damn world and its dog are after my skin" and "Shut your trap, there's a draft," to "Next time you wanna play with fire, use a matchbox instead."

They Made Me a Fugitive Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Sourced from the BFI National Archive's 2009 restoration, Kino's 1080p/AVC-encoded Blu-ray transfer is excellent, presented with fidelity to the film's natural 35mm appearance—no grain-erasing DNR or harsh edge enhancement here—and exhibiting only minor print damage. You'll spot occasional white/black specks, small vertical scratches, and some mild contrast/brightness flickering, but nothing pervasive or distracting. Clarity gets the most visible improvement from standard definition DVD, with substantially increased detail, especially visible in the fabric textures of the characters' dapper suit jackets and overcoats. Minus some slight fluctuations in black levels, the gradation is spot on—with deep noir shadows and crisp but never overblown highlights—and there's a rich spectrum of grays in between. The transfer's not quite up to the level of some of the B&W films put out by The Criterion Collection—see The Seventh Seal or Letter Never Sent—but it's impressive nonetheless. Noir fans should be pleased.

They Made Me a Fugitive Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

For the film's Blu-ray debut, Kino has included an uncompressed Linear PCM 2.0 track that's mostly clean and clear, free from the overtly distracting hisses, pops, and crackles that sometime plague mid-century movies. Of course, films from the '40s typically have a slightly thin, bass-less quality, and They Made Me a Fugitive is no different. Still, it is what it is, and I suspect we're getting as good of an audio mix as is capable from the source materials. The film's limited music cues sound good—almost entirely free of high-end clipping—and the dialogue is easy on the ears, if not always intelligible. Kino hasn't included any subtitle options, and as decently recorded as the actors' lines are, the combination of brisk British accents and outdated slang makes for occasional moments where you may wonder, wait, what did he just say? Not a deal-breaker by any means, but in the future it'd be nice to at the very least get English subs on these Kino Classics releases.

They Made Me a Fugitive Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The lone extras on the disc are trailers for Nothing Sacred, A Star is Born, and Pandora and the Flying Dutchman.

They Made Me a Fugitive Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Prefiguring The Third Man by two years, They Made Me a Fugitive tells a similar—if not quite as visually and dramatically potent—tale of England's post-war black market criminal underground, filled with dark cobblestone streets, contraband-stuffed coffins, and snappy gangster dialogue. Kino's sharp-looking Blu-ray release features a restored 2009 high definition transfer by the BFI National Archive, and though the disc has no special features to speak of, this is a purchase-worthy must-see for connoisseurs of noir—especially fans of the damp and drafty British variety. Highly recommended!