Capital Tales: The Long Arm

Usually damned with faint praise as an 'efficient' thriller, this late Ealing entry is rather more than that. Hawkins plays a world-weary detective trailing a serial safe-cracker. Instead of a cheery Dock Green, we get a bleak suburb, a neglected wife and a betrayal. The air of social realism is heightened by the documentary-style photography, including a tense showdown at the Royal Festival Hall.

Plus an extract from The Brownie Version (UK 1951, c3min).

Introduced by an Archive curator