Irish Film Institute -THEY MADE ME A FUGITIVE

THEY MADE ME A FUGITIVE

Director: ALBERTO CAVALCANTI

103 minutes| U.K.| 1947| Black and White| D-Cinema


This quite rare post-war British thriller by Alberto Cavalcanti has been beautifully restored by the British Film Institute National Archive. Trevor Howard stars as Clem Morgan, a hard-bitten ex-RAF pilot who’s drawn into a London black-market gang led by the sinister Narcy (Griffith Jones) and his even more sinister mother. Framed for murder, Clem breaks out of Dartmoor prison and heads for London, bent on revenge. The film teeters on the edge of noir, is surprisingly tough and sports expressionist flourishes.

Although dismissed by Trevor Howard’s biographer Vivienne Knight, They Made Me a Fugitive is a very fine and hugely influential movie. Cavalcanti brings a highly stylised perspective to bear on a very English crime story, giving it some of the qualities of French poetic realism. The outstanding visuals are the work of Czech-born cinematographer Otto Heller, who was schooled in the traditions of German Expressionism and went on to shoot Michael Powell’s notorious Peeping Tom. (Notes by Peter Walsh).

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