Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4830 in DVD
• Released on: 2006-08-21
• Rating: Parental Guidance
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 84 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Fifty years on, it's hard to appreciate just how shocking one key scene in The Blue Lamp was considered by British audiences. Young delinquent Tom Riley (played with sensuous malevolence by Dirk Bogarde) guns down kindly, benevolent copper, PC Dixon (Jack Warner.) In early 1950s Britain, murdering a policeman was the ultimate taboo. Even the underworld's denizens help the police flush Riley out. Made by Ealing Studios, The Blue Lamp is not a comedy but shares many of the studio's characteristic comic hallmarks, as well as the same writer (TEB Clarke) for their classics Hue And Cry and The Lavender Hill Mob. Consensus and tolerance are the watchwords. Individualism is frowned upon. There are no extravagant displays of emotion, not even from Mrs Dixon (Gladys Henson) when she learns what happened to her husband. The understatement is very moving, although by today's standards the representation of the police seems absurdly idealised. Were they ever the doughty, patient sorts depicted here? It is no surprise to learn that Scotland Yard co-operated in the making of the film but this is much more than just police propaganda. Well-crafted, full of finely judged character performances, it ranks with Ealing's best work. It was made at an intriguing historical moment: before rock and roll and the era of teenage affluence, there was simply no place for young tearaways like Tom Riley. --Geoffrey Macnab

Customer Reviews

Great Movie
This was the movie that changed British gangster films for ever,
Originally written by (Lord) Ted Willis, it introduced us to PC George Dixon, part social worker, part father confessor and part copper.
Dirk Bogarde plays a troubled teenager with a gun (even though when the film was made, Bogarde was already a a decorated war hero!) who kills PC Dixon in an alley.
Jack Warner's character was brought back to life to star in the BBC's long running series "Dixon of Dock Green" which ran from 1955 until 1976.
It's a great movie, a real slice of 1950's post-war Britain.
Buy and enjoy.

London As It Was (?)
This film was the acorn from which sprang the oak of Dixon of Dock Green, the longrunning TV series featuring Sergeant Dixon, amiably wise local uniformed policeman, who always started and ended each episode with a homespun homily. My grandmother never missed. In the film, Dirk Bogarde's young gangster shoots dead the then Police Constable Dixon and is pursued relentlessly but with almost amusing gentility by the Metropolitan Police, who, naturally, capture him in the end. The film is skilfully made and the raffish atmosphere of postwar London brilliantly shown. Ground and aerial shots of the main areas used (Little Venice, Maida Vale, Paddington, North Kensington) are of interest not only to the film buff but to social and architectural historians. As an ex-Little Venice resident myself, I was once more amazed to see how much has changed (sometimes for better, sometimes not) in the Regent's Canal area and elsewhere and how much of the redevelopment has been the work of planners and local councils, rather than the Luftwaffe, who (outside the docks and nearby areas of the City and East London) really damaged London, overall, scarcely at all during WW2. Another interesting point is the paucity of traffic in those poor and petrol-rationed days. Dirk Bogarde is able to drive at speed down deserted streets, pursued by the squad and area cars of the police. The main car chase is, in today's terms, "iconic" and, with its near massacre of a school party on a pedestrian crossing, surely must have inspired the almost identical scene in the watchable Sixties film Robbery (based loosely on the Great Train Robbers). The final scenes before Bogarde's capture, in the crowded yet lonely confines of a dog-racing track (White City, I think) are classic, capturing the clammy despair of a criminal like that in those days when a crime like his would lead inevitably to the hangman's rope. A British classic.

A truly great British film
I genuinely believe this to be one of the great British films and I can watch it again and again and never become bored of it. So many memorable images; PC Dixon's fate; the child finding the gun; Dirk Bogarde's chilling performance; the nature of the crime sickening even the most hardened of criminals; and much, much more.
This is truly a window into a lost world - some of the photography of 1950s London is astounding - and I'm sure many modern viewers might find it all a bit silly - this is, after all from an era when accents were either cut glass or "Gor, Blimey Guv'nor" vulgar - but you'd have to have a heart of stone not to be deeply moved by the scene with George Dixon's wife after the shooting.
It also comes from a time before the idea of the "honest copper" was tarnished forever, and when there really were "bobbies on the beat" - a time when many villains could be portrayed as "lovable rogues" but, if you bear in mind that you are watching a slice of lost history - in a very effective semi-documentary style - you will find a lot to enjoy in this film, and the basic sense of justice and ideals of right and wrong as showcased in this film still make very powerful viewing.