One of the most recognized British noirs and a thrilling collection of traditional noir ingredients, Alberto Cavalcanti’s They Made Me a Fugitive (US: I Became a Criminal) stars Trevor Howard as Clem Morgan, an aimless Royal Air Force veteran who’s drawn into the criminal life by black marketeer and sociopath Narcy (Griffith Jones). After a robbery goes wrong, the getaway car hits a policeman, killing him instantly, and crashes into a street lamp; Narcy, who was driving, knocks Clem unconscious, moves him behind the wheel, and runs off with the loot with a third gang member named Soapy (Jack McNaughton). Clem is sentenced to 15 years in prison but manages to escape so he can clear his name and take revenge on Narcy with the aid of Sally (Sally Gray), the girlfriend Narcy tossed aside. Intricately plotted and tightly paced, the film moves through a funeral parlor smuggling enterprise, warehouse robbery, cop killing, prison escape, home invasion, amateur bullet removal, kidnapping, and rooftop chase. Cavalcanti spares no violence, maximizes tension, floods every scene with shadowy atmosphere, and incorporates novel editing techniques (note the kaleidoscopic spinning as Sally gets beaten to a pulp). Forming a tapestry of postwar tension and uneasiness (“This is the century of the common man”), some scenes are composed like self-contained vignettes: in one of the most memorable, for example, Clem breaks into a remote farmhouse for shelter and food where a spectral woman offers a bath and shave if Clem will kill her dipsomaniac husband upstairs.