The Water that Binds in “Forbidden Cargo”

“Forbidden Cargo” (1954) is ultimately, properly a crime film, with settings that match a spy thriller and plot twists true to the police/customs procedural, but its holding quality is so inexplicably soft and gentle that somehow it’s neither of these, a uniquely quiet B-movie treasure. Directed by Harold French, it stars the utterly charming Nigel Patrick as Michael Kenyon: a brisk, bright customs investigator who has to figure out how to prevent a large consignment of smuggled drugs from reaching England’s shores, cleverly picking up clues and delicately courting danger on the way. There’s all the sparkling tense elegance of the continental, sailing martini set (with a beautiful Elizabeth Sellars) and all the patient, thoughtfully revealed routine of a diligent detective mystery, but at its heart there’s a hazy detachment and disconnect, distracted by something larger, more lasting, more binding: maybe the odd and provincial postwar/peacetime order of ‘England, someone’s England’ (in fact, if you needed any more convincing, it also stars PC Dixon himself, lovely Jack Warner). 

Have you ever read ‘North Coast Recollections’ by Betjeman? “Then pealing out across the estuary / The Padstow bells rang up for practice-night / An undersong to birds and dripping shrubs. / The full Atlantic at September spring / Flooded a final tide-mark up the sand, / And ocean sank to silence under bells, / And the next breaker was a lesser one / Then lesser still. Atlantic, bells and birds / Were layer on interchanging layers of sound.” It’s a little like that, I feel: Kenyon is hot on the trail of his criminals driven by a tight, engaging plot and crisp compelling dialogue, but it’s all rhythmically awash between damp England with its cold pebbly shores and peaceful mackerel skies to the Riviera Coast with its silky ruffled waves and velvety wee-hour depths, a preserved past in strange familiar places. Add to it a young eccentric Joyce Grenfell and you get a lovely rainy Sunday sort of film (even better when it’s not a rainy Sunday too, like today) Xo