The Blue Lamp (1950) (2024)

Popular reviews

• Review by 🇵🇱 Steve G 🐝 ★★★★ 3

  The Third Summer of Scam

  The days of making films about the police portraying them as cordial old bobbies helping little old ladies find their ration books are, of course, a long way behind us. And they should be.

  Yet somehow, The Blue Lamp's centrepiece scene is still shocking. It could be because, even to this day, guns are just not a part of British society, and seeing someone murdered with one still carries a lot of weight. Or perhaps it's because we're seeing Dixon of Dock Green getting it from a babyfaced Dirk Bogarde. I don't know. But it's still one of the most brutal scenes in this country's cinema history, carried out by a devil-may-care lout who really…

• Review by bbbgtoby ★★★½ 8

  Post war London is a mess, the rubble of bombed out houses are used as children's playgrounds, unemployment is high, rationing is still in effect, a new generation of young people are coming of age having only known the war and broken families, crime is on the rise and there aren't enough Bobbies on the beat, or so they say.

  With The Blue Lamp Basil Dearden crafted a very English response to the pseudo-documentary strain of film noir coming out of America in the form of classics such as The Naked City. We are introduced to life in the city through a whirlwind car chase that results in some anonymous desperado crashing his car and then shooting an innocent man,…

• Review by hiruko ★★★★

  Slice of life, Hill Street Blues -London edition, circa 1949.

• Review by Richard ★★★½

  There was once a time when London’s Metropolitan police had nothing better to do than drink tea, help old ladies cross the road and attend choir rehearsals, or so The Blue Lamp would have us believe, but by 1950 those days were evidently coming to an end as a new generation of nihilistic young criminals emerged to terrorise the streets of the capital. No doubt every generation has felt this way—certain sections of the British media clearly still do—but the whiff of pro-police propaganda is never far away from this film.

  Fortunately, though, director Basil Dearden brings a great visual flair, showing a keen eye for the dilapidated streets of a city that still bore the scars of World War…

• Review by Jim ★★

  One of my favourite tweets of all time asks "Why must a movie be 'good' ? Is it not enough to sit somewhere dark and see a beautiful face, huge?"

  After seeing this film, I have to assume that truly was enough for the people of the 1940s and 50s. Outside of a few exciting chase sequences, this is basically just 80 minutes of tedious copaganda about the ways bumbling bobbies were being forced to deal with the consequences of rising post-war poverty instead of doing their usual... choir-singing and stargazing?

  Dirk Bogarde is a babe in this, though. I'd love to see his face, huge.

• Review by Mark Cunliffe 🇵🇸 ★★★★

  Basil Dearden's The Blue Lamp became the most successful British movie of 1950 and has gone on to be the most famous, most influential of all the British police films. Scripted by ex-policeman T.E.B. Clarke (from a story by Ted Willis and Jan Read), the film is a perfect example of Ealing, and the studio's consistently effective depiction of postwar Britain, helped in no small part by an almost pseudo-documentary style in its examination of the police force and a new and terrifying breed of young criminal; reckless and violent as a result of the hardening influence of the war years.

  Personifying Tom Riley, the loose cannon criminal representing this new world, is a wonderfully edgy Dirk Bogarde in a…

• Review by RAFIF ★★★★ 1

  delves into the gritty and sometimes dangerous world of policing, with a focus on the pursuit of a group of criminals. The tension escalates as the criminals actions become increasingly brazen, leading to a tragic turn of events that has a profound impact on the characters and the audience

  Jack Warner as PC George Dixon is a standout performance. He brings a sense of wisdom and compassion to the role, making Dixon a relatable and endearing character. His iconic character would later become the basis for the long running TV series Dixon of Dock Green.

• Review by RKO_Chester ★★★

  An interesting atmospheric movie about the daily doings of Police work circa 1949 London.

  Jack Warner leads this effort and Jimmy Hanley plays his son-like colleague (If interested in this combination see how they worked together in The Huggetts movie series).

  The long lasting British TV Police series "Dixon of Dock Green" was created based on this movie. The atmospherics in this movie are great. Lots of scenes are filmed on actual 1949 London streets and a well-shot car chase is also featured in the latter half of this.

  Bernard Lee provides able support, but the plot is weakly developed--- everything seems to depend on the nervousness of the girlfriend of one of the bad guys (Dirk Bogarde) and this girlfriend is not played very convincingly by Peggy Evans.

  6.25/10 (atmospherics are not enough to make a movie "good")

  Other BRITISH films that are, in my book, of respectable quality.

• Review by Avirup

  Copaganda. Some solid location work but otherwise it is so dull that I don't even know what happened except them robbing a movie theatre. Also like who would want to rob a movie theatre lol..

• Review by pirateneckbeard ★★★ 1

  So this is a very Goofus and Gallant movie in it's portrayal of a young upstart British beat cop and a criminal trying to be tough and take what he can. There is some decent procedural elements but the story seems a little milquetoast for there admiration for the boys in blue where they all get along and work for the greater good. Hell they even practice as a choir before shift. Saying that Dirk Bogarde(Tom Riley) as the villain was really solid fun over the top performance and it does capture some grit of post ww2 London trying to find itself again. It's a fun light crime film that doesn't really create waves but you might just enjoy the splashes.

• Review by Paul D ★★★½ 4

  Do you remember the good old days of British Crime? When everyone knew their place? Where there was a healthy respect between both sides and cosy relationship, everyone knew everyone else's name, first names when the coppers spoke to the criminal fraternity and the police were always addressed as Mr? And where the cops were armed with nothing more than a torch, if it was night time? No? Me neither.

  But apparently there was such a time, when the principle duties of the Bobby on the Beat was helping old ladies across the road and handing out directions to the nearest railway station.

  Well this film is set around about the time when, as this film would have it, that…

• Review by wersku ★★★

  While most of the movies i have watched/heard are produced lack of knowledge about what is going on in the real London during the time of post-war London this is an exception(if read it correctly from the online), thanks to its accurate representation of the atmosphere of a city changing fast, I mean there is scene where childrens play at the rubble of destroyed house from the bombs in world war 2. Jack Warner does an outstanding job rendering his character. His portrayal gives the movie its realism.

  What the movie especially stresses is how the law enforcement cooperates with the community it defends. The movie details the relationship between police and the persons they comes across in the course…