Review for Nightbeat

The steamy poster for ‘Nightbeat’ looked like it might deliver a fairly convincing hard-boiled noir but its intrinsic Britishness and its propensity to drop  into kitchen-sink melodrama at the drop of every hat means that it never quite makes the grade.



But it’s a film that’s well worth investigating, even if you’re just curious to see a very serious Sid James as a cynical droopy-eyed piano player who never talks without a cigarette hanging from his lips.


Released in 1948 (but shot during 1947) the film starts with a topical narrative for the time which shows two ex-commandoes trying to settle back into civilian life following the war; Felix (Maxwell Reed, a teen idol in the early 40’swhoeventually married Joan Collins) and Andy (Ronald Howard – best known as son of Leslie Howard and the first big TV Sherlock Holmes in 1954) are two ex-Commandoes who initially both sign up to become policemen together, but then drift apart – one as a copper and the other giving up the law for some quick money in the black market.


Cue the women. Felix, the good cop, falls for nice-girl Julie (Anne Crawford) who he is set on marrying, and Andy falling for the dubious charms of show-girl sex-kitten, Jackie (Christine Norden in her film debut).



Of course, both men face great challenges. Felix can’t convince Julie that being a copper’s wife is a good thing (her Father is one and she knows how little he is paid for his dangerous work) and poor Andy is apt to make a complete fool of himself drooling over Jackie who has no intention of wedding him. Indeed Jackie has her eye on the handsome (but crooked) owner of a Soho nightclub, Hector (Don Brady) where she sings.

But, get this, he’s only in love with Julie and would do anything in his power to marry her, seeing her as an aspirational catch, ‘white and clean like my new walls’. What’s worse is that Julie agrees to marry him as she is so frustrated by Felix’s stubbornness in sticking to the police job. But then Hector can’t keep his hands off Jackie either and…

You get the picture.



It fairly rattles along and there’s no denying Christine Norden’s smouldering on-screen charisma which was to turn her into something of a sex symbol in the UK for the next few years. Apocryphally she was discovered in a cinema queue by Sir Alexander Korda and given a screen test which got her the role in Nightbeat.)


The transfer provided by Network / StudioCanal is excellent and despite the film’s vintage it looks in stunning shape.



It may not be the greatest film of all time by a long stretch but certainly one worth digging out of you have an interest in post-war British cinema. I thoroughly enjoyed it; far more than I thought I would and I'm not generally a lover of melodrama. Maybe it was the post-war vibe or perhaps seeing Sid James in such melancholy mood. Who knows? There's no accounting for taste.