Scarlet Thread

SCARLET THREAD is an interesting little British crime film that works thanks to a good cast and some different locations to the usual. The plot sees B-movie veterans Laurence Harvey and Sydney Tafler playing an unlikely couple of robbers who decide to team up and rob a jewellers with the help of getaway driver Harry Fowler. Unfortunately things don't go to plan and they are forced to hide out in one of the local colleges, where Harvey falls for the charms of a young woman bored with her genteel life.

The first thing to note about this film is the location: instead of the grim back streets of London, this is set in the wide open Cambridge and in particular in the grounds of one of the colleges there. It makes for a refreshing change of scenery and the director makes good use of his locations throughout. SCARLET THREAD feels unpredictable from beginning to end and has sudden bursts of tense action mixed with growing suspense so that you never quite know what's going to transpire next.

The second thing of note is that the cast is very good for a film of this budget. Harvey excels as the hot-headed young criminal and makes the viewer feel nervous whenever he's on screen. Kathleen Byron is an effective object of lust and exudes charisma and believability in her part. Best of all is Tafler in a surprisingly large and sympathetic part for the actor; his crippled character is both desperate and pitiful and really holds the film together, an A-list performance in a B-list picture. The likes of Fowler, Dora Bryan, and Cyril Chamberlain add quality in minor parts. SCARLET THREAD is a decent addition to the genre that more than holds its own against rival American fare.

Kathleen Byron was one of the most fascinating actresses of the noir period, while she only came to her rights under the direction of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. She did make a number of other thrillers besides the Archers productions, and this was one of her best. She is confronted here by Laurence Harvey as a very young man in one of his earliest roles, acting a nervous young amateur gangster with a gun, which of course he uses only for blunders, but his performance as this green hoodlum totally unsure of himself except for his interest and relations with dames is just perfect. This was Lewis Gilbert's first film, and it is startlingly Hitchcockian. The pastoral idylls of Cambridge with its ancient colleges and almost equally ancient professors are made the background of a shockingly grim drama of a burglary going wrong involving the accidental murder of an old man, who proves to be the last man the murderer would have liked to have killed. Sydney Tafler is the other villain, who has forced Harvey into his service for a professional job, in no way alerted by the fact that Harvey is such an unreliable amateur. Of course, it can only go from bad to worse, but there are many great moments of sustained suspense, and the fireworks in the end for the celebration of a centenary of a college is the perfect background for the final escape by the Ghost's Gallery, where for a striking effect the ghost actually appears of a man believed dead.

This early fifties British film starts off really well, and features some excellent London and Cambridge locations. The chase scene, concerning the students pursuing the crooks through the streets of Cambridge, is novel and very well staged. Unfortunately, from thereon in the film tails off, and becomes bogged down in a talky and drawn out scenario. Kathleen Byrom and Sydney Tafler acquit themselves well, although it has to be said that Laurence Harvey, in an early role, gives a patchy performance, at best. The interlude between Byrom and Harvey, referred to by other reviewers, is certainly a surprise especially given the age of the film. The censor must have nipped out for a coffee at that point, but obviously returned for the end of the film which simply terminates far too abruptly (can anyone shed any light on this?) In conclusion, it's a pity the film wasn't condensed a bit more before its finale, which could have done with being more conclusive.

Well you could have knocked me down with a feather when I saw that this one was without 5 votes at the time of comment. I caught it on UK TV (BBC2) last night as part of a season that they are doing of great British films.

Basically the film is about an upper class jewel thief Marcon and the oikish pickpocket Freddie who becomes his protégé. Early on in the movie Freddie saves Marcon's life. After this and clearly against his better judgement Marcon feels a sort of responsibility for Freddie and decides to do a job with him. Freddie is mercurial, and unlike the blue-blood Marcon does not know when the boat should not be rocked. He's got a caveman type thang for the ladies and is not averse to the odd tantrum.

They commit a bungled jewel heist in Cambridge and have to make off on foot. They run into one of the colleges and hide in the garden of the Master's lodge. They talk their way into staying the night with Josephine, the Master's daughter who is not aware that anything is afoot. Josephine is the most interesting character, a lady whom the audience of the time would certainly have identified with. She has grown weary of the softly-dripping peace of Cambridge and her bespectacled don suitor. She's looking for a more racy life, she's bought a ticket on the ride and wants her money's worth so to speak. Cue Freddy who moves through the gears in no time impressing her with his cinema-learnt American accent and lingo.

Josephine as played by Kathleen Byron is what we in Britain would call a fox. Her skin is like alabaster and her bosom full and on permanent display. There is not even the mark of a scowl on her face, she's a classy lady. It is after her that the movie is titled, quoting from the Song of Solomon 4:3 "Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet, And thy mouth is comely." She comes by the end of the movie to realise that flings with Freddies are not quite all they're cracked up to be. But I won't spoil that for you.

There is in this film some of the raciest innuendo that I've ever seen even in modern movies, and it's all quite carefully disguised. That for me was the added value. There is also a quite noirish sentiment, education is shown off as the luxuriant pursuit of the fop. If this had been an American-made film it would certainly be called noir. It's a very enjoyable little film, not quite as coherent or stylised as the great movies, but a high-calibre matinée that one can't quite fail to enjoy. 8/10

What distinguishes this crime film from many of its contemporaries is not so much the plot, though the dialogue is above average, but the degree of authenticity its characters have and the location shooting in Cambridge and the West End of London.

Laurence Harvey's cheap aggressive spiv, complete with trilby and a phony accent, modelling himself on an American gangster, or at least the Hollywood version of one, had his real life counterparts, as court cases of the period show. One clever scene is set in a seedy amusement arcade as Harvey's womanising Freddie tries to pick up a low class tart (Dora Bryan) much to the disapproval of Sydney Tafler's educated, rather aloof, possibly gay character Marcon (alias Bellingham). There's also a vague resemblance at first to the relationship between Terry and Arthur in MINDER; Tafler is excellent throughout. We meet the magnetic Kathleen Byron's Josephine just before the botched smash and grab resulting in murder and soon learn of her anxiety at the prospect of being stifled amid the tranquil, cloistered "backwater" of her university surroundings with her suitor, staid academic Arthur Hill. Byron was one of the few British actresses of the day whose characters were clearly made of flesh and blood, and here the refined Josephine is sufficiently attracted to the working class, pseudo American Freddie, as to be quite ready to jump straight into bed with him, an unusual development for a film of the time. There's some tension and moments of dry humour, particularly involving Josephine's aunt Eleanor (Renee Kelly). But the film's main interest in the later stages lies in the relationship between the three leading characters, as it works out against the university background.

Sadly, the recent DVD release confirms that the film has only survived in a mutilated form, with minutes missing toward the end, leaving the eventual fate of Freddie, Marcon and accomplice Harry Fowler unclear.