The Long Haul

An unusual noir with high drama and high adventure, Ken Hughes’s The Long Haul stars Victor Mature as American WWII veteran Harry Miller who drives a truck for a criminal element in Liverpool while his marriage to an intransigent Englishwoman is collapsing. He falls in with the ridiculously sexy Lynn (Diana Dors), girlfriend of mob boss Joe Easy (Patrick Allen), who launches Miller on a path of unstoppable self-destruction. The film’s final act follows the three leads in a lorry as Harry drives it over treacherous mountain roads, creating moments of nervous intensity a la Henri-Georges Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear (1953). Trevor Duncan’s dramatic score and Basil Emmott’s gorgeous cinematography maximize tension and establish an atmosphere of filtered light and moral relativism. It’s a relationship-driven film that combines stylistic panache and character depth, Dors challenging herself to act beyond her bombshell status. Foghorns bleat, expressions darken, and men turn inward as night blankets the world.