Payroll (1961)

The 1961 heist drama Payroll concerns a vicious gang of crooks led by the ruthless, cold blooded Johnny Mellors (Michael Craig) who, with the help of inside man Pearson (William Lucas) raid an armoured van carrying the wages of the local factory. Naturally the wheels come off the job a little as both the driver of the armoured van and one of the gang are killed in the heist. As the gang bide their time waiting for the heat to die off, Jean Parker - Billie Whitelaw's vengeful widow of the slain guard -  turns detective, applying the pressure on the guilt wracked Pearson as the rest of the gang start to come apart from within.

Like the previous year's Hell is a City (which also starred Whitelaw) Payroll marked the start of British cinema's desire to depict a far grittier, more honest realism than previously attempted and to address the fact that the UK was more than just London. Director Sidney Hayers who was a prolific yet unremarkable pair of hands for such drama breaks out of the falsehoods of the studio and the London-centric traditions to depict the industrialised, working class north - in this case the smoking factories, working docks and grimy, cobbled jiggers of Newcastle and Gateshead, all a decade before Get Carter punched a complacent cinema in its soft, flabby guts. 

Unfortunately, just like Hell is a City, this commendable effort is scuppered by the fact that their realism only goes so far; for some scenes Rugby in Warwickshire stands in for the plot's working class Newcastle, and the industrialised North East is populated by far too many middle-class London, cockney or mild north country accents as if to say that although we accept that the time has come for a degree of realism, let's make sure everyone can at least understand what our cast are saying. 

George Baxt's screenplay, based on a novel by Derek Bickerton, offers a grim noirish sensibility that destroys the naive notion of honour among thieves. Each character is depicted as calculating, selfish and without mercy, as they set about a series of double crosses that ensure crime does not pay. The film's strength perhaps lies in the fact that, despite the testosterone normally associated with heist dramas, Payroll offers two genuinely strong and rather meaty roles for women at a time when this was rather lacking across the board. As the widow Parker, Whitelaw has the biggest character journey, going from ordinary housewife and mother to dogged avenger, whilst French actress Françoise Prévost almost steals the film as Pearson's embittered wife; a woman saved by him during WWII and promised a better life, only to find herself unfulfilled in suburbia. She captures the very essence of that kind of woman who has previously had to get by on her wits and now knows no other way of life. She is determined to get what she wants, what she feels she is due, and is happy to do so completely without compunction.

Of the male cast, Michael Craig is surprisingly effective as an out and out villain. Granted one might expect Stanley Baker to occupy such a role, and he'd be perfect of course, but Craig feels just right here and his increasing immorality is all the more surprising given it comes from such a seemingly urbane, civilsed looking man rather than an obvious tough, even if you do feel that Tom Bell's increasingly dissatisfied 'lieutenant' could easily take him. That reminds me - it's always good to see Tom Bell, he was a favourite of my dad's back in the day (his current favourite is another Tom; Tom Hardy) and he's become one of mine since too. He brings the right sense of genuine grit required for the proceedings, especially as he's one of the few on display who has a legitimate northern accent, but you do find yourself yearning for his character to let rip a little more with the insubordination. 

Another familiar face who pops up that you're always happy to see is Kenneth Griffith, who appears here as the gang's liability, turning to drink and running off at the mouth. There's an amusing scene where he's followed from the pub by two young thugs who proceed to roll him in an alleyway - his prone body coming to rest on a sodden newspaper ad proclaiming 'I look my best on a Murphy' - whatever that was! In fact there's a few surprising examples of dark comedy on offer here, such as the factory employee who fearlessly jumps on the back of the getaway car only to wear a look that says 'what the hell am I doing?' before being unceremoniously pushed off by Craig's villain.

Overall, Payroll (which earned a new lease of life thanks to Julien Temple incorporating several clips into his 2009 Dr Feelgood biopic, Oil City Confidential) is a solid if a little unspectacular and overlong example of early 60s British noir. I enjoyed it, but I do think someone should have got Reg Owen to tone down his brassy, jaunty jazz score which borders on the intrusive at times and with a few notes that put me in mind of the opening bars to '80s gameshow Every Second Counts!

The Silent Enemy (1958)

The Silent Enemy remains a somewhat low-key but very interesting war film, interesting primarily because of the influence it would subsequently have on future films, most notably those in the Bond franchise.

The film attempts to depict the life and wartime exploits of the legendary British frogman Lieutenant Lionel Crabb, R.N.V.R, known to all as 'Buster' Crabb. It was based on the biography Commander Crabb by Marshall Pugh and released on the wave of publicity and fascination that arose from Crabb's disappearance and likely death whilst secretly investigating the Soviet cruiser Ordzhonikidze and its propeller design on Naval Intelligence orders in 1956.

The film opens with an incident from 1941, the Italian manned torpedo raid on Alexandria, which saw their frogmen plant limpet mines on the hull of two British battleships, attacking and disabling them. This was to be first strike in a concerted Italian effort against British naval supremacy in the Mediterranean and, in Spain, the Italian underwater expert Tomolino observes the British base in nearby Gibralter, planning their next move against a British convoy. Concerned by this new Italian tactic, the British navy assign bomb disposal expert Lionel Crabb to head up their response. Crabb quickly develops a flair for diving during this posting and begins to form a team of divers who can intercept the attacks from the Italians and defuse their bombs, as well as investigating the suspicious death of General Sikorski of the Polish Army, whose B-24 Liberator aircraft crashed in the waters off Gibraltar in 1943. Infiltrating a Spanish dock, Crabb and his team identify the torpedo-laden ship the Italians are planning to attack from and launch an unauthorised and pre-emptive strike against them, destroying the ship and foiling their plans. In recognition for his efforts during the war, Crabb was awarded the George Medal.

The real Crabb, photographed in Gibralter

Laurence Harvey as Crabb

Crabb may not be the well known name he once was (after all it is some sixty years since his mysterious disappearance in a Cold War incident that will not be revealed by official records until 2056) but he was unmistakably a true British hero. William Fairchild's film ought to stand on a par with Lewis Gilbert's biopic of ace flier Douglas Bader, Reach For The Sky, released two years prior to this, as both films try to get under the skin of what was clearly a very courageous, but also complex and eccentric breed of hero. Laurence Harvey's dark locks are dyed blonde for the role and he also wears a full naval beard to deliver one of his more memorable performances, coming off occasionally like a cross between James Robertson Justice, James Bond and Roger Moore's diving hero character ffoulkes from 1979's North Sea Hijack.

Which brings us neatly on to the question of inspiration. The lead character in North Sea Hijack is undoubtedly based on Crabb, whilst Ian Fleming was compelled to write the Bond novel Thunderball in both the wake of Crabb's disappearance and the release of this filmed biopic. The splendid underwater cinematography on display here from Otto Heller - including the underwater hand-to-hand battle scenes between British and Italian divers (which didn't actually happen) - is certainly a key influence on the similar underwater segments of Terence Young's subsequent adaptation of Fleming's novel, and indeed of other Bond film to feature similar scenarios that has followed.

It's not an historically accurate film, but it is an enjoyable one although a little slow moving. It boasts a fine supporting cast, including Michael Craig as Crabb's lifelong diving buddy, Sydney Knowles (who, before his death at the age of 90, claimed Crabb was killed by MI5, rather than the KGB, because of a desire to defect to Russia) and Harvey's friend and fellow South African Sid James, playing it mostly straight as Chief Petty Officer Thorpe. However, I believe it was this film that ended their friendship as James became angered by how fame had gone to Harvey's head by this point and the allegedly disgraceful attitude he took towards the crew during filming.

Sapphire (1959)

Made in 1959, just one year after the Notting Hill riots and a little before the more permissive '60s, Basil Dearden's Sapphire is a great and detailed depiction of ethnic tensions in 1950s London and, as such, it is culturally and socially significant as much as it is a great police procedural film.

When the body of a young white girl is found in the undergrowth on Hampstead Heath,  Superintendent Robert Hazard (Nigel Patrick) and his colleague Inspector Phil Learoyd (Michael Craig) are called in to investigate and find that the murder victim was a young student called Sapphire - three months pregnant and not as white as she seems; she is in fact of mixed race, born to a black mother and a white father. The search for her murderer leads them to her white boyfriend David Harris, a gifted architecture student, and a tragic web of lies that saw Sapphire pass herself off as white among the bigoted society of London.

A multifaceted film, Sapphire not only plays on the murder mystery aspect presenting the fears and guilt of the many suspects, but also in revealing, beneath the veneer of civilised respectability, the insecurities and small minded prejudices of ordinary people. And it really is a strong murder mystery, with Dearden expertly wringing out every drop of tension towards the revelation of both the guilty party and the details of the murdered girl's life. 

Earl Cameron provides the reveal of Sapphire's true ethnicity, playing her brother Dr Robbins, a decent middle class black man, well aware of his colour and what it excludes him from in life. Sapphire is especially notable for showing a successful, middle-class black community - something which is sadly and ridiculously still all too rare even in today's 'modern' cinema - though it does have, in contrast to Cameron's superb understated playing, some black gangster caricatures in the hidden London our two detectives delve deeper into. 

Patrick and Craig play the detective duo extremely well. Whilst it's perhaps wishful thinking that officers of the Met in the 1950s were so gentlemanly, middle class and polite, the film does at least depict Craig as the more prejudiced with some pretty disgusting comments - a neat contrast to Patrick's more open minded senior, for whom the war and the fight against fascism no doubt shaped his character. You can trace a line from these two here right the way through to the recent BBC '60s set crime drama, George Gently.

But the best intentions don't always make for a wholly satisfying production and Sapphire does slip up on occasion to present its own prejudices; equating a young woman living alone in London with promiscuity, as well as several incidences of unchallenged racism. But this is reportage, and you have to accept that this was what the country - the world, even - was like in 1959.