Forbidden Cargo

British noirs often lacked the grit and seediness of their American counterparts, sometimes dismissed as too staid, too polite, too British. One such film that starts out this way is Harold French’s Forbidden Cargo, a drug smuggling tale whose first act is dominated by the caricatural Lady Flavia Queensway (a wonderful Joyce Grenfell), aka “Birdie,” a homely old maid and dedicated birdwatcher who might have stepped right out of a cozy Agatha Christie whodunit. For better or worse, the charming Birdie practically disappears from the film twenty minutes in after she gives information to Inspector Michael Kenyon (Nigel Patrick) of the customs office, who’s been on the trail of a nautical drug smuggling ring. A series of clues lead Kenyon to arrest Steven Lasovic (Eric Pohlmann), who ends up murdered after tipping off the police to an enormous drug shipment due in three weeks time, and then to suspect Rita Compton (Elizabeth Sellars), who plays dumb before departing for a vacation in the South of France. Kenyon follows her to France and makes it his business to get close to both Rita, with whom he becomes romantically involved, and her brother Roger (Terence Morgan), an expert diver who affixed explosives to enemy ships during the war. Jack Warner plays Kenyon’s boss at the customs office, Major Alec White, and Greta Gynt plays socialite Madame Simonetta. The serenity of the Cote d’Azur, where the characters seem to exist exclusively on yachts, gives way to a final third of the film where action, suspense, and noir style get ramped way up (the scene of a car racing to jump an opening drawbridge is out of this world). Cinematographer Pennington-Richards experiments with highlights, shadows, and deep focus, especially whenever the action moves to abandoned streets or watercraft decks at night (note the elegant fistfight depicted as silhouetted figures in front of white curtain brightly lit from behind.