The Blue Lamp

United Kingdom

1950

84 Min

Black and White

1.37:1

English

Currently 3.7/5 Stars.
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SCR T.E.B. Clarke, Jan Read, Ted Willis, Alexander Mackendrick

CAST Jack Warner, Jimmy Hanley, Dirk Bogarde, Robert Flemyng, Bernard Lee, Peggy Evans, Patric Doonan, Bruce Seton, Meredith Edwards, Clive Morton, Frederick Piper, Dora Bryan, Gladys Henson, Tessie O'Shea

On the one hand the story follows the first days of a rookie policeman settling in at his new post. Andy (Jimmy Hanley) is fresh-faced, keen, anxious to shine. Pc Dixon shows him the ropes and offers him lodgings under his roof, a tiny terraced house with pigeons in the backyard and socks drying on the line under the mantelpiece. In contrast to this cosy domestic life, which continues in the police station with shots of choir practice and friendly jossing over egg-and-chips in the canteen, is set the story of two young hoodlums, played by Dirk Bogarde and Patric Doonan, and a raid on a dowdy suburban cinema in which Dixon is shot down in cold blood. It seems that shooting a policeman, let alone one as popular with the community as this one, is simply not a right and proper way to further a life of crime, and there is a tacit understanding between the police and the underworld to help catch the guilty. —Britmovie.co.uk

Director

Basil Dearden

Basil Dearden (born Basil Clive Dear; 1 January 1911 – 23 March 1971) was an English film director.

Dearden was born at Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex. He graduated from theatre direction to film, working as an assistant to Basil Dean. He later changed his own name to Dearden to avoid confusion with his mentor.

He first began working as a director at Ealing Studios, co-directing comedy films with Will Hay, including The Goose Steps Out (1942) and My Learned Friend (1943). He worked on the influential chiller compendium Dead of Night (1945) and directed the linking narrative and the “Hearse Driver” segment. He also directed The Captive Heart starring Michael Redgrave, a 1946 British war drama, produced by Ealing Studios. The film was entered into the 1946 Cannes Film Festival. The Blue Lamp (1950), probably the most frequently shown of Dearden’s Ealing films, is a police drama which first introduced audiences to PC George Dixon, later resurrected for the long-running Dixon of… read more

Basil Dearden (born Basil Clive Dear; 1 January 1911 – 23 March 1971) was an English film director.

Dearden was born at Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex. He graduated from theatre direction to film, working as an assistant to Basil Dean. He later changed his own name to Dearden to avoid confusion with his mentor.

He first began working as a director at Ealing Studios, co-directing comedy films with Will Hay, including The Goose Steps Out (1942) and My Learned Friend (1943). He worked on the influential chiller compendium Dead of Night (1945) and directed the linking narrative and the “Hearse Driver” segment. He also directed The Captive Heart starring Michael Redgrave, a 1946 British war drama, produced by Ealing Studios. The film was entered into the 1946 Cannes Film Festival. The Blue Lamp (1950), probably the most frequently shown of Dearden’s Ealing films, is a police drama which first introduced audiences to PC George Dixon, later resurrected for the long-running Dixon of Dock Green television series. His last Ealing film, Out of the Clouds, was released in 1955.

In later years he became associated with the writer and producer Michael Relph, and the two men made films on subjects generally not tackled by British cinema in this era. These included homosexuality (Victim, 1961) and race relations (Pool of London, 1951; Sapphire, 1959). In the late 1960s Dearden also made some big-scale epics including Khartoum (1966), with Charlton Heston, and the Victorian era black comedy The Assassination Bureau (1969), again with Michael Relph.

His last film was The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970) with Roger Moore, with whom he later made three episodes of the television series The Persuaders!: Overture, Powerswitch and To the Death, Baby. Dearden was killed in a car accident in 1971, in a horrific crash on the M40 near the spot where the character Harold Pelham – the Man Who Haunted Himself – is supposed to have crashed his car in the opening sequence of the film.

He had two sons, Torquil Dearden and the screenwriter and director James Dearden.

The film critic David Thomson does not hold Dearden in high regard. He writes: “[Dearden’s] films are decent, empty, and plodding and his association with Michael Relph is a fair representative of the British preference for bureaucratic cinema. It stands for the underlining of obvious meaning”.

More positively, for the Australian film writer, Brian McFarlane: “Dearden’s films offer, among other rewards, a fascinating barometer of public taste at its most nearly consensual over three decades.” —Wikipedia

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