Basil Dearden's London Underground

Although not one of the more well-known British directors, Basil Dearden helmed nearly 40 feature films, proving himself a reliable craftsman who—at his best—made intelligent, ambitious, and often provocative works. Of the four productions featured in this boxed set, the earliest—Sapphire (1959)—is the most awkward, as crisp British restraint collides with the little-seen culture of segregation and racial prejudice in late-1950s London, while a pair of detectives (Nigel Patrick and Michael Craig) investigate a murder. Dearden revisits racial issues in All Night Long (1962), a reworking of Othello set in the jazz world. Much more stylistically adventurous (if a little gimmicky), the film is also of interest for onscreen performances by Dave Brubeck, Charlie Mingus, and Johnny Dankworth (among others), and features Patrick McGoohan in the Iago role. The League of Gentlemen (1960) is a solid and meticulous heist movie about a group of small-time crooks (including Jack Hawkins, Roger Livesey, and Richard Attenborough) who put their military background to use on a bank robbery and develop a true gentleman's code of honor and loyalty along the way. Victim (1961), arguably the class act of the quartet (and the best known), confronted Britain's criminalization of homosexuality (which continued into the late ‘60s), displaying a sense of outrage at the law and a sympathy for the victims driven underground. Despite its speechifying, Victim remains a handsomely theatrical film with a crime thriller thread running throughout, as a celebrated barrister (a rich performance by Dirk Bogarde) puts his career on the line to take on blackmailers preying on gay society. The latest set in Criterion's extra-less Eclipse line, this is recommended. (S. Axmaker)