Britnoir, very recent find
Posted by Solomon on 6/11/2020, 4:07 am

The Heart Within (1957) 59m.

It may be there on some list, but I've never seen this film on any list of any kind. This is a genuine noir.

5/10
The heart within is the same, despite the skin color.
Neil-1176 May 2002

A murder suspect, played by Earl Cameron, is a West Indian immigrant who must depend for help on white Londoners. It's an early attempt to deal with the racial tensions provoked by the influx of immigrants to Britain from less affluent parts of the former British Empire after the second world war. Child actor David Hemmings, as Danny, easily outshines most of the other characters.

"8/10
Surprisingly Excellent
boblipton5 June 2020

A man has been murdered and the police want to get their hands on Earl Cameron, who quarreled with the victim shortly before. He's disappeared, and when street kid David Hemmings runs across him, intends to stay that way. When he had first come to London from the West Indies, he trusted everyone. Now he trusts no one, not even David Hemmings, who promises to bring him food.

Half procedural mystery, half indictment of race relations, the remarkable thing about this movie is the assured performance of Hemmings. He was fifteen when he made this movie, but he looks and acts much younger. The cast is filled out with other well know British actors, like James Hayter as Hemmings' grandfather, and the script by John Baxter and Geoffrey Orme makes its points with belaboring the issues. The result is a complicated and important film masquerading as a simple one.

Posted by Don Malcolm on 6/11/2020, 3:34 pm, in reply to "Britnoir, very recent find"

And a good find. Mentioned in passing in several books about British film/British "B's" in the 50s, but overshadowed by "flashier titles" such as POOL OF LONDON and SAPPHIRE. A continuation of Earl Cameron's representation of what scholars have termed "the West Indian generation" as it ruffled feathers in post-WWII UK. Cameron was considered so iconic in such roles that the creators of the UK's most head-on examination of racial tension, FLAME IN THE STREETS (1961), would expand a character only alluded to in Ted Willis' original play to ensure Cameron's presence in the film.

Looks as though there may be a source for THE HEART WITHIN...