As I have said before Joseph Losey, along with Ben Barzman,
was listed by the House of Un-American Activities as communist sympathisers and
both took up residence in Britain. Losey settled in London in January1953 and
thereafter made some of the best British films of the 1950’s and 60’s some of
which can be accessed on my blog by clicking on this Joseph
Losey link.
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| The suspect being questioned by the future head of C15. |
In any other directors hands Blind Date (1959) would
have been a conventional British crime drama but as Robert Murphy[1] so
rightly points out Losey, with the help of Barzman’s co-written screenplay
adapted from Leigh Howards novel Chance
Meeting, transforms it into a ‘critique
of a repressive class ridden society’ He goes on to explain that in The
Servant, King and Country, Accident
and The Go-Betweens his [Losey] treatment of the English class system
is always that of an outsider, fascinated and slightly appalled, in Blind Date despite its French femme
fatale and its Dutch leading character is bolder and more polemical. Its
remarkable in the fact that it is the only one of Losey’s films to validate his
left wing credentials.
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| The 'victim' and the suspect. |
The directors handling of the two working class characters were
exceptional. Inspector Morgan (the wonderful Stanley
Baker) is the son of a chauffeur and appears to have worked his way through
the ranks of the police force the ‘hard way’ and has an uneasy relationship
with his middle class colleagues and his superiors. He is told in no uncertain
terms that to get any further in his career he must develop a deeper
understanding of public service, in other words cowl down to his so called
betters and perhaps join the ‘Lodge” which Morgan does not appear to be able,
or want, to do! The second working class character is our suspected murderer
Jan Van Rooyen (Hardy Kruger) the son of a coal miner and a penniless artist
who develops a weakness for our murdered femme fatale, one Jacqueline Cousteau
(Paris born Micheline Presle).
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| Inspector Morgan doing his job. |
We first meet our Dutch artist on his way to a date at the Clive
Mews flat of Ms Cousteau, when he arrives the front door is open, he enters
closely followed by the police who discover the dead body of the French woman
lying covered up on her bed. The hard-bitten Welsh detective Inspector Morgan
begins his interrogation of his number one suspect. We are transported back in
time to explain the relationship between the rather dislikable Jan and the
victim, how they met, her visits to his rented studio, and how Jan fell in love
and became enchanted with this beautifully alluring older woman.
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| Joseph Losey with Hardy Kruger and Micheline Presle. |
I may admittedly be a little biased due to my high regard
for the director but urge you to see this more than acceptable crime drama,
which as I have said previously not only emphasises exquisitely the British
class structure it gives a credible portrait of a love affair of ‘convenience’
between rich and poor, and also underlining how in the British movie industry
at that period the portrayal of the police was becoming ever more realistic and
far less flattering than the cosy world portrayed in earlier ‘Dixon of Dock
Green’ type features.
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