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The Strange Affair (1968)

Director: David Greene

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Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

York plays a solemn young constable new to the Metropolitan Police who is convinced that right is right, but gradually discovers that life just isn't like that; caught in a squeeze, he takes one hapless step after another, until the bitterly cynical ending has him languishing in jail while the particularly vicious gang of crooks go free. Essentially it's a well-written anecdote about police manners and methods, straight out of some TV cop series, but as viewed by Greene's wilfully wayward camera, it becomes a bizarre, quirkishly funny thriller which laces its documentary surface with a fine grain of fantasy. Much of Greene's later work disappointed, but here he displays a visual flair (gang violence in an echoing warehouse, murder among the wrecked cars in a scrapheap, seduction in a fantastically opulent boudoir) that would not entirely have shamed Welles in his Lady from Shanghai mood.

Author: TM

Time Out Film Guide

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User reviews of this film

Jon Sherwood said...

Posted on Oct 09 2007 00:15 I saw this film in Germany in the late 60's, it had a lasting effect on me, not least in the fact that 40 years on I still recall it. To my innocent 18 yr old mind it was frightening, exciting and enthralling. There was nothing else like it in the cinena at the time and yet there was no great fuss about its existence or content at the time and it has 'ceased to exist' since. I find it intriguing that it is impossible to obtain this film anywhere today, it was a true British classic but it is now as if it never existed.

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