I Watch Films: Tiger In The Smoke

Tiger In The Smoke

An adaption of an Albert Campion detective novel (by Margery Allingham), which omits Campion; I will leave the conclusions of that to the reader. It’s London in the 50s. Meg Elgin’s husband was killed in the war; she’s planning to re-marry but has been sent a picture of him and told to go to the train station. Waiting there with the police she spots a man of the right build, wearing what is surely her dead husband’s coat. But it’s not him, it’s a former soldier and out of work actor recently released from prison. Having committed no crime they let him go.

The fiancé follows him and falls in with a gang of ex-soldier/buskers/beggars who are also looking for him. Eventually it turns out they were a unit commanded by the husband, and on a raid in Brittany he hid a treasure. Somewhere in the middle of this is Jack Havoc, who was the sergeant, is a violent psychopath, and used to be known as Johnny Cash. His mother is Lucy Cash, a local loan shark, who got hold of the coat as the housekeeper of Meg and her parents (a vicar and wife) owed her.

Eventually this tangled web comes to a conclusion; the husband left instructions should Meg marry again, the nature of the treasure is revealed and the recreation of the raid turns tragic.

Watch This: Some terrific stylised scenes of a post-war London, with the ex-solder band appearing and vanishing in the smog
Don’t Watch This: Everything is unnecessarily convoluted from start to finish