'Sordidness, Corruption and Violence almost Unrelieved': Critics, Censors and the Post-war British Crime Film

摘要

This article examines the responses of critics and censors to a cycle of contemporary crime films produced in Britain in the late 1940s. Films such as They Made Me A Fugitive, Brighton Rock and No Orchids for Miss Blandish were the objects of critical hostility and political controversy on account of their 'sordid' and 'brutal' representation of British society. The article argues that these films had been passed for public screening as a consequence of a period of institutional instability within the British Board of Film Censors. Following the public outcry that attended the release of No Orchids for Miss Blandish, however, the Board sought to reassert its authority by forbidding any further films of the same sort.