The Long Memory (1953)

The Long Memory is directed by Robert Hamer, is based on the novel by Howard Clewes and stars John Mills, Geoffrey Keen, Elizabeth Sellars, John Slater, Eva Bergh and John McCallum.Davidson (John Mills) goes aboard a boat to ask his girlfriends father if he can marry her. Criminal associates of her father are also aboard and when a fight breaks out one of the gang is killed. Davidson is wrongly accused of the crime by his girlfriend and her father so they don't incriminate the man actually responsible.Wrongly convicted and sent to prison Davidson dreams of getting revenge. When he gets out he goes looking for those who accused him. His girlfriend (Elizabeth Sellars) is now married to a Police Inspector (John McCallum). An eager journalist called Craig (Geoffrey Keen)believes Davidson when he says he is innocent and he follows him as he goes after those who were on the boat that night.The film is interesting too for the viewer because part of you want's Davidson to dish out some revenge but at the same time you don't want him to, if he does he will end up back in prison again or worse receive the death penalty. Mills is excellent as an ordinary, decent man who's life is turned upside down and because of that becomes embittered and obsessed. It's a rare dark role for Mills and he is brilliant, it's a shame he was never able to play more characters like this. He really lets us see the rage this man has lurking just beneath the surface and lets you see how driven he is to get revenge.The ever wonderful Keen is a treat as the journalist who knows he's on to a good story and also believes in Davidson's innocence.Eva Bergh is excellent as a young waitress at a café who befriends Davidson and ends up falling in love with him, their scenes together are very tender and Mills does a good job of showing he is coming to care for her but doesn't want to risk trusting her again after the way his girlfriend treated him. You want this pair to get together and you hope all will work out well for them.Sellars is good as the woman who only cares about herself and doesn't realise until much later just what her accusations cost Davidson.This is a very good thriller and I love it's use of grimy and stark real locations. Strong performances and a gripping story make this well worth a watch.

This is a highly superior British film directed by Robert Hamer. All of the cast give splendid performances, and there are some truly wonderful character roles, the best such performance coming from John Slater, who is amazingly bizarre and original. The film features a man let out of prison after twelve years for a murder he did not commit, and his search for the people who gave false witness and put him there. John Mills delivers one of his first rate performances as a grimly determined, sombre and brooding man who is obsessed with the injustice done to him. With him at the centre of the story, the entire film then becomes wholly convincing. There are some wonderful location shots, and the row of abandoned barges rotting in the mudflats of the Thames Estuary is an eerie main setting for much of the action. Elizabeth Sellars is particularly effective in making this film work. She plays a despicable coward, whose cowardice runs so deep it effects every aspect of her existence. In order to portray something as profound as this, it was essential that she do so with understatement and restraint, occasionally veering near to immobility as the fear freezes her up inside. The fact that Elizabeth Sellars does this successfully and never gives way to the temptation to overact or settle a scene with some easy broad stroke is a tribute to her professionalism. Eva Bergh is a bit too young and pretty for her part as the Eastern European refugee girl, but that is the only slightly false note. Thora Hird is marvellous, as always. John McCallum underplays his police inspector-married-to-a-dodgy witness role very satisfactorily. The story culminates in the main characters having to face moral choices, so that this powerful, gripping and effective thriller is not only well made, but has a worthy purpose.

With its clunky dialogue, dodgy acting and funereal pace, this revenge 'thriller' would appear to have little going for it. What drags it out of the ordinary is its wonderful sense of location. This is way ahead of its time - it would be another 7 years before 'Room at the Top' ushered in that brief period of gritty social-realist dramas that would make the inner city landscape so familiar to cinema audiences. In 'The Long Memory', the desolate mudflats of the Thames estuary are used to brilliant effect to convey the spiritual desolation of Davidson, while the run-down streets and shabby domestic interiors of Gravesend vividly conjure up the dreariness of 1950s Britain.

I am a fan of British cinema but I must admit that there a couple of genres that Hollywood does much better, particularly musicals but also film noir. In fact I didn't know that the British had attempted noir until I saw Robert Hamer's `The Long Memory' which makes a fair fist of it while perhaps finally lacking the courage of it's convictions. The doomed characters, the shadowy, desolate streetscapes and of course the femme fatale are all there and John Mills convinces as a broken man at liberty after serving 12 years for a crime he didn't commit.John McCallum and Elizabeth Sellars are perhaps a little too restrained in the English way (I know McCallum is Australian) but John Slater makes an impression as a punch-drunk ex-boxer. Incidentally, Slater's make-up reminded me irresistibly of Mills' Oscar-winning turn in ` Ryan's Daughter' years later.In this solid, involving drama Mills has revenge in mind, Geoffrey Keene is an ethical reporter (an oxymoron?) looking for a story and nothing turns out as expected.Well worth seeing.