Sapphire (1959)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Sapphire (1959) – B. Dearden

A young girl is murdered on Hampstead Heath.  The police investigate.  The young girl’s fiancé is questioned but he has an alibi.  Then, suddenly, she is discovered to have been black but passing for white.  Prejudice rears its ugly head; in 1950s London many people apparently feel no shame for voicing their bigotry.  The fiancé’s family harbor such unfounded hatred in their hearts.  But another suspect, a black man, appears and the cops latch onto him.  Director Basil Dearden manages to keep this tense police procedural moving and thought provoking while not telegraphing its conclusion (that is, keeping the murderer’s identity a secret until the very end).  Nigel Patrick is solid as the police superintendent who seems fully aware of the wrongs of racism even while his partner seems to condone or even support some of the negative sentiments.  Still, it would have been great if more of the characters more vigorously presented an anti-racist message (rather than simply looking askance or suggesting that any group could be the targets of prejudice.  But perhaps the’50’s are too soon to hope for such an explicit take on the problem?  In any event, the crime genre formula mixed with an examination of social problems/social issues is a dynamite combo and worth hunting down.