Street Corner.

Review #1652: Street Corner.

Cast: 
Peggy Cummins (Bridget Foster), Terence Morgan (Ray), Anne Crawford (Susan), Rosamund John (Sergeant Pauline Ramsey), Barbara Murray (WPC Lucy), Sarah Lawson (Joyce), Ronald Howard (David Evans), Eleanor Summerfield (Edna Hurran), Michael Medwin (Chick Farrar), Charles Victor (Muller), and Anthony Oliver (Stanley Foster) Directed by Muriel Box.

Review: 

"It was the heyday of the cliff-hanging serials, the one- and two-reel slapstick comedies, and the flickering newsreels. King Edward VII's funeral was the most impressive spectacle we had ever seen." 

Being known as one of England's most prolific female directors should be quite an accomplishment, particularly when doing so in an era as long ago as the 1950s and 1960s. Consider this: Box directed a dozen movies in her life-time, and no other female director has matched this accomplishment since. Muriel Box (born Violette Baker near London) wanted to be an actress and dancer (after developing a love for cinema as a child during World War I), but her failings led to other pursuits. In 1929, she started as a secretary at British Instructional Films. In 1932, she would meet (and soon marry) journalist Sydney Box, and they would soon work together in writing, such as with short plays. Being involved with film was quite a family affair for the Boxes, as Sydney's sister would also be involved with Verity Films, for which the three would be behind production over hundreds of wartime propaganda shorts after its inception in 1940. Muriel would direct for the first time with the documentary short The English Inn (1941). The Boxes would work together extensively in the decade with writing scripts alongside producing one-act plays. The Seventh Veil (1945) would be their greatest achievement in terms of screenplay. Their screenplay would win an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay that year, which made Box the first woman to have won the award. It would spur Sydney to moved to head of production for Gainsborough Pictures while Muriel would do story department and Betty would be a lead producer. With The Lost People (1949), she received her first credit as co-director because of her work in post-production (the original director was Bernard Knowles), as she re-shot over half of the feature. The Rank Organization would close Gainsborough in 1949, and Betty would move to Pinewood Studios and become a noted producer in her own right, while Sydney would create London Independent Producers with Murial as one of the partners. Box set out to become a director with an adaptation of So Long at the Fair (1950) but star Jean Simmons (for some reason) insisted to Box being replaced. Regardless of the intrusion, in 1952, Muriel would do her first solo theatrical effort with The Happy Family, which she co-wrote with Sydney. Ultimately, Box would direct a dozen of films until her last one in 1964, which were characterized as low-budget mixes of comedy and drama despite facing doubts from those around her (one actress thought it would be "strange and uncomfortable" to have her as a director). Box was not ultimately finished doing work within promoting women, as she would co-found the first feminist publishing company in England with Femina in 1965.

This was her third theatrical effort, one that be characterized as part of her method of covering society through the roles of women - in this case, an episodic ensemble talking about female police officers. The film (also known as Both Sides of the Law) served as a compliment to The Blue Lamp (1950), a crime thriller that was quite notable for its social realism of the time. It is the kind of "torn from the headlines" movie, one with cooperation from the Metropolitan Police (incidentally, women were only allowed into the force in 1919). It isn't the kind of movie with fancy details as so much it is one that has a semi-documentary feel (complete with shooting in London) while involving vaguely connected stories about family disorder to go alongside mildly interesting drama that nevertheless still seems useful enough for a viewing for what it ends up doing in breezy entertainment. It isn't flashy or packed with grand memorability (such as the aforementioned Blue Lamp film, which inspired a TV series that lasted two decades), but it manages to do a quiet job in portraying the grind of the time with decent enough spectacle in careful pacing for 94 minutes. The main star is Cummins, the young Irish focus (of sorts, since 28 is the new 18, I guess) that has to carry tension with a bit of impulse shining through that keeps us curious for a role that could've been bent as simply one to scoff at. Morgan (who had a modest career sprinkled with "bad guy" roles) follows along as the alluring presence of shifty means that one could see making a good pull at someone's head (in a film with well-meaning cops and a few off-kilter people, he sticks out). Crawford and John (each near the end of their careers, as the former died in 1956 while the latter retired after one more film role) are our main focus in terms of the side of the police, and they carry the movie to where it needs to go in the business of procedural patience with fair charm - this isn't exactly the kind of role that needs devastating screen presences, merely someone who can play the role with that right sense of dutiful consistency. Summerfield makes up the secondary focus with her own shocking involvement with the police, somehow going from rescuing a kid from water while deserting the Army. She does fine with the role, slowly uncovering the layers as a reluctant hero with fair polish. There is another subplot involving a neglected child that also has its own little moments, but the sticking point is within Cummins and Morgan, particularly since one even gets to see a police dog take part of the carefully swift climax. As a whole, it is exactly the kind of film one could expect of a police drama of the 1950s from a British director - swift, fair to the point, and suitable to those who are curious for what it likes to say of the time. For Muriel Box, it serves as a fair and worthy achievement - quietly effective in performances over style with the budget and circumstances given that certainly merit consideration for one of England's most prominent female filmmakers for the time.

Next Time: While Joy Batchelor was a co-director on this film, it is still an intriguing one to consider, since it is the first British animated feature...Animal Farm.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.