They Made Me a Fugitive (1948)

In the post-war in London, the unemployed and former RAF pilot Clem Morgan (Trevor Howard) is invited by his acquaintance Narcissus "Narcy" (Griffith Jones) to join his gang of smugglers and smalltime thieves that uses a funeral home as headquarter. When Clem sees drugs in a coffin, he decides to leave the gang after his last job looting a warehouse. However Narcy betrays him and activates an alarm, but Clem escapes from the warehouse and gets in Narcy´s car. When the gangster Soapy (Jack McNaughton) is driving the getaway car, Narcy orders him to hit and run a policeman on the street. The car crashes a post and Narcy also hits Clem´s head and flees with Soapy, leaving Clem unconscious in the car. Clem is arrested and convicted for manslaughter and sent to a prison in Dartmoor. When Clem receives the visit of Narcy´s girlfriend Sally Connor (Sally Gray) and learns that his girlfriend Ellie is with Narcy, he decides to escape from prison. Now he is a fugitive and seeks out Soapy to clear his name and Narcy to revenge is betrayal."They Made Me a Fugitive" is a good British film-noir with themes that might have impacted the audiences in 1947. There is reference to drug; torture of woman; and wife executing the alcoholic husband. The cast is excellent and the performances are top-notch. The beauty of Sally Gray is ahead of the time. The plot is well-resolved but the woman that kills her husband is forgotten. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "Nas Garras da Fatalidade" ("In the Claws of the Fatality")

Surprising british noir directed by a brazilian Alberto Cavalcanti,the high point of the movies are certainly the smart dialogues between the colorful characters in special way Mary Merrall as Aggie an old woman who support the gang asking everytime a little gift,Griffith as gang's leader don't stay back on a stunning performance as cold lower class crook which apply all kind of violence to take foward his leadership,Trevor as always fine as newcomer gang who is framed few days after joined them,the escape of prision until reach in London is fabulous,very impressive british noir with class,almost a masterpiece!!Resume:First watch: 2018 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 9.25

A good deal of British film noir style suspense is generated in I BECAME A CRIMINAL (U.S.A. title: THEY MADE ME A FUGITIVE) starring TREVOR HOWARD as an ex-RAF pilot who becomes a bored civilian and falls in with a racketeering gang shortly after the end of WWII.GRIFFITH JONES is the sinister, rough and tough leader of the gang who decides to set Howard up for the murder of a policeman during an escape from the cops. Howard spends some time in prison before breaking out and going all out for revenge by returning to London for a confrontation with Jones' gang.While the story itself is nothing original, it's done with such style and flair for this kind of grim material, the B&W photography giving realistic glimpses of post-war London on the gritty side.SALLY GRAY is very effective as the woman who helps Howard and believes in his innocence. The supporting players register strongly as individual characters.The final shoot-out is a bit too frenzied for my taste, extending for quite awhile before the villains are disposed of. Despite this, the ending remains downbeat with just a glimmer of hope that some day Gray will be able to prove her man has been railroaded and is innocent of the murder charge for killing a policeman.Well worth viewing if you like suspenseful, brisk stories of this genre with dialog that is strong and forceful. While this bears no relation to the John Garfield film, THEY MADE ME A CRIMINAL, its plot outline does bear a strong resemblance to the Burt Lancaster thriller, KISS THE BLOOD OFF MY HANDS with Joan Fontaine helping Lancaster elude the pursuing authorities while on the run.

This one is a damned curious British noir (some, including myself, would generally have that as an oxymoron, but I'm comfortable with the term here, as it really is precisely tapping into post-war malaise and other very recognisable Yankee genre tropes). Nice dialogue too, "He's not even a respectable crook, he's cheap, rotten, after-the-war trash" describing baddie Narcy (short for Narcissus after the Greek myth, well played by Griffith Jones).Wild child RAF ace Clem (Trevor Howard) is too bored with civvy street after all the shoot-em-ups, Immelmans and ack-ack show. So he decides to try his arm at crookery and ends up with Narcy and his gang, Narcy needs a guy with class. Only things don't go so well so Narcy hangs a frame on Clem and takes his popsy. "What's 'e in for?" "Manslaughter - killing a cop" "That's not manslaughter, that's fumigation".The rest of the film is the revenge story. It's all nice and dark up to a point, but gets rather too intricate for its own good and sprawls a bit, ending up feeling twenty minutes too long at 1 hr 40 mins. Due to the times there's not much scope for the violence that some scenes in this film pretty much demand according to the dictates of logic. The lack of the effect half of cause and effect makes the climactic scene absurd, and actually had almost the entire theatre at the Edinburgh Film Festival's revival screening in giggles. There's room for humour in a film like this, Hitchcock showed that well, but I think Cavalcanti over-eggs the pudding in the manner of Jon Farrow's American noir of 1951, His Kind Of Woman. The humour came in as a step change rather than equally spread in an even-toned master work. I may of course be in the position of being kind and assuming that the humour was intentional.