Once a Sinner

It’s too bad that English stage actress, singer, and dancer Pat Kirkwood, the first woman to star in her own British television series, only made a handful of films; her screen presence is captivating in films like Lewis Gilbert’s little known noir melodrama Once a Sinner, in which she portrays a rebellious girl from the wrong side of the tracks who ruins the life of the man infatuated with her. After a chance encounter with the vivacious Irene James (Kirkwood), young banker John Ross (Jack Watling) breaks off his engagement with Vera Lamb (Joy Shelton) and, against his mother’s (Thora Hird) wishes, obsesses over Irene until she agrees to marry him. Only later does he learn that Irene has a baby with sleazy counterfeiter Jimmy Smart (Sydney Tafler) who’s determined to get her back and whose criminal activity will jeopardize not only John’s employment status but his life. The film’s first half focuses on the drama of family and romance, while the latter half darkens significantly to culminate in violence, murder, and suicide, including several deep noir sequences involving flashing carnival lights, streetlamps in the fog, the hazy whoosh of a speeding train, a stabbing accompanied by organ music beneath a sign warning “Repent Ye Sinners.”