The Criminal
(AKA The Concrete Jungle)
With Stanley Baker, Patrick Magee, Sam Wanamaker.
UK, 1960, 35mm, black & white, 97 min.
Print source: British Film Institute
Losey paints a searing, stunning portrait of a corrupt world in this dark crime film that contrasts swinging London with the stark theatricality of prison life and the bleak winter landscapes gorgeously captured by master cinematographer Robert Krasker (The Third Man). Stanley Baker unleashes an intense performance as a stylish ex-con whose ties to a crime syndicate draw him into an ill-fated racetrack robbery and the hands of a sadistic prison warden (Magee) determined, at all costs, to find the hidden loot. The Criminal marks the first of five collaborations between Losey, a passionate lover of jazz, and the great British jazz composer John Dankworth, whose wife Cleo Lain is heard singing the haunting ballad "Thieving Boy."
PRECEDED BY
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First on the Road
Directed by Joseph Losey.
UK, 1960, 16mm, color, 12 min.
Print source: British Film Institute
During the late 1950s and early 1960s, Losey partially supported himself in Britain by making commercials for such products as Ponds Cold Cream and Rose's Lime Juice. One of Losey's longest commercials, this advertisement for Ford automobiles reveals his great acumen as an editor and his skill at discovering formal challenges even within his more mundane assignments.
