clanciai Review of For Them That Trespass

For Them That Trespass (1949)

Life at the bottom lifted up by its basic but overwhelming humanity

[10/10 · 27 November 2020]

Ernest Raymond was a priest who served in the First World War as a chaplain at the front, and after the war he started writing novels and produced many. They are of mixed quality, but some of them are exceedingly good, like "We, the Accused" and this one, which was made into an equally gripping film by the Brazilian Cavalcanti with Richard Todd in his first great part. The novel is almost Dostoyevskian in character, dealing with crime and injustice and its unsurveyable consequences, and the film sticks to its very human character, staying all the time on the level of basics of human life, society and circumstances. The actors are all perfect, and no wonder that Richard Todd later made such a distinguished career, starting like this. The cinematography is also striking in its very dark character with deep shadows and sharp photography, often with close-ups, which gives the whole feature a somewhat expressionistic trait. This is a unique classic of its kind, railway workers, shabby pubs, loose women, intimate local insights, and to top all this a crazy alcoholic painter, who actually gets the last word. In its gutter character, it is a pearl shining the more brightly for shining and rising in the gutter.