User reviews

Apart from the unique acting style of Jack Hawkins (before his so sad illness), one thing which marks this film out from modern detective yarns is that the detective work follows logical sequences - little depends on chance and nothing on fantastic coincidences.

It is a rattling good yarn - I only wish the same could be said of todays films.

And the supporting cast!!! Ian Bannen gets run over and killed and (Sir) Alec McCowan is an unimportant doctor. But everyone has to start somewhere.

Those were the days

Gerald (aged 72)

This is a superb police detection drama, with Jack Hawkins as the warm-hearted focus of a rather complex crime saga. The best supporting performance is by Ursula Howells, who brilliantly conveys neurotic menace and desperation in just a few scenes. The young Ian Bannen is killed off very quickly, but already in this early appearance we can see his superior qualities working on screen. This 1956 British film is clearly an attempt to emulate the 1940s and 1950s Hollywood films such as 'The House on 92nd Street', directed by Henry Hathaway, since it also portrays stolid and patient police work, shown in loving detail. There are no 'noir' elements to this drama, and the crime is just crime, with no psychology or angst. The plot has some intriguing novelties. In the first safe robbery at the beginning of the film, the thief remains at the scene of the crime and pretends to be a night watchman, lets the police in, shows sympathy and bewilderment, and then makes his escape after they have gone. The whole case really is a brain-teaser, and well worth viewing by any chess player or detective enthusiast. It is a superior British film of its genre.

In this cracking black and white police drama, Ealing comes up trumps yet again. Made in 1956, with good locations in and around London, the story concerns Jack Hawkins, as Superintendent Halliday, who has to track down, a very clever cat burglar, who is an expert in disguises.

What makes this film so interesting, is that Hawkins, trying to reproduce the character, made a similar film, 2 years later, called 'Gideon of Scotland Yard', which was shot in colour by the great John Ford. Where 'Long Arm' succeeded in every way, 'Gideon' was a shambles. It just proves that the one of greatest directors in Hollywood history, and a good cast , are hamstrung, without a reasonable script. 'Long Arm' holds you in suspense right up the final scene, even when you know, that the cinema code of the day, will not allow the villain to escape. A good supporting cast from a large range of well known British actors, makes this film a must to see. 8 out of 10.

The Long Arm is an excellent film in my opinion, for 2 main reasons. Firstly it captures all the elements of a typical 1950s British film, with typical London landmarks, familiar faces from other movies, and accents and a way of life portrayed from that era prior to the onset of the society-changing 1960s. Secondly the movie provides, for someone watching for the first time, a thrilling plot with several twists which keep you interested right to the end.

Hawkins is superb as the central character - with the investigation of a hit-and-run murder obviously a more serious crime in 50s London than nowadays. This is the sort of film to watch if you are off work on a midweek afternoon.

Very solid brit crime drama. Fine performance from Jack Hawkins. Thankfully, not so much stiff upper lip as we were used, the humour between Hawkins and his sidekick the John Stratton bubbles along and the mechanics of the plot is nicely constructed and presented. A veritable glut of fine British actors both future stars like Ian Bannon and Stratford Johns and small part favourites like Sam Kydd and Harold Goodwin. Also keep an eye out for a young Nicholas Parsons playing a copper. If you're a resident of London it will be fascinating looking at the sites of our capital and seeing how much it has changed. An undiscovered gem worth digging out

An alarm goes off in an office. 90 seconds later, the police are there. The puzzled night watchman lets them in and walks them around. Eventually, the safe's alarm is reset. The next morning nine thousand pounds are missing. It seems the watchman has been in hospital for two days. Chief Inspector Jack Hawkins and his new sergeant, John Stratton are confronted with a puzzling case that will lead them all over England and Wales before they begin to get onto their unseen quarry.

It's a police procedural, which is a type of mystery I don't favor, but this movie, directed by Charles Frend, is carried by a fine mystery plot, good acting and a script that shows a bit of the coppers' lives outside their work. Because it is a procedural, it shows the routine of intelligence and footwork that leads to an arrest. It's a thoroughly solid movie out of Ealing Studios.

Agree with all previous comments. I first saw this film on TV 20 years ago on a wet Sunday afternoon and loved it. I recorded it on VHS the next time it was shown on telly, bought it when it came out on commercial VHS and have just placed an advance order on Amazon for the DVD version which is due out in February 2008.

It's a glimpse into a lost world - 1950s Britain - and all the more charming for it. A surprising amount of location shooting adds to the authenticity. Facsinating to see the Royal Festival Hall, for example, standing alone before the South Bank was developed. I even went on a pilgrimage to Long Acre to check out Stone & Company Ltd - it's still there and looks exactly the same (the building that is)! The detective work is logical, methodical and low-tech. Scraping some clothes fibres of a car radiator is about the height of the forensic work.

Some nice touches of humour too. Example: Jack Hawkins complaining that his Sergeant is running off to a payphone to call his girlfriend. "You haven't seen her," comes the reply, "she's worth three shillings for three minutes." That must have had them blushing in the 50s.

Things only slow a bit when we're dealing with the Hawkins domestic front but that's a small complaint and was no doubt intended to inject a little social realism.

Find yourself a quiet afternoon, make yourself a cup of tea, crack open the custard creams and enjoy.

What is now commonly referred to as the 'police procedural' goes back as far as 'The Moonstone' of Wilkie Collins in the 1880's and in filmic terms has reached its highest level in 'Quai des Orfevres' of Clouzot, 'Maigret tend un piege' of Delannoy and probably greatest of all, the 'High and Low' of Kurosawa.

Here we have the other end of the spectrum in this film of former editor turned director Charles Frend. Mr. Frend's directorial style is workmanlike and far from flamboyant which happens to suit this material extremely well.

Jack Hawkins plays a plainclothes detective as he had done in Carol Reed's masterly 'Fallen Idol' and would again in John Ford's abysmal 'Gideon's Day'. This actor had a touch of class but also possessed the common touch which, together with the wonderful voice of which he was so cruelly deprived in the mid-1960's, makes him immensely watchable as a detective-superintendent investigating a series of robberies.

The film succeeds admirably in depicting the monotonous routine and drudgery of police work which involves a lot of perspiration and the occasional flash of inspiration. It gradually gains momentum and builds to an exciting climax.

Good support from dependable Geoffrey Keen and elegant Ursula Howells. Interesting to see Ian Bannen and Alec McCowen in early roles.

Those of a certain age will no doubt feel a pang of nostalgia at spotting such rare sights as a bobby on the beat, well-dressed concert goers, practically empty roads, being able to hop on a bus and the spectacle of a passenger being helped by a guard to board a moving train!

This film also marks the end of an era as it was the last to be made by Ealing Studios under the leadership of Sir Michael Balcon. Nothing lasts forever.

The Long Arm is directed by Charles Frend and written by Janet Green and Robert Barr. It stars Jack Hawkins, John Stratton, Dorothy Alison and Michael Brooke. Music is by Gerard Schurmann and cinematography by Gordon Dines.

Detective-Superintendent Tom Halliday (Hawkins) heads up an investigation into a number of safe cracking robberies. Which in turn turns into a murder investigation.

Out of Ealing Studios, this is a little cracker of a police procedural detective mystery. The flow of the investigation is natural, not given over to wild implausibilities, and always the air of mystery is potent. On the outskirts of the investigation there's a running thread about how policemen's wives/girlfriends suffer in their own ways, their men are married to the force, and this is delicately handled by the makers. While the moments of wry levity are not misplaced. Production is spiffing, with a number of London locations vibrantly used and given a film noir sheen by Dines (The Blue Lamp), while Frend (Scott of the Antarctic) keeps it tight and interesting whilst getting grand perfs from the cast - notably a wonderfully regal Hawkins.

So if you are looking for an old time British policer that doesn't insult your intelligence, then you need look no further. 8/10

With Jack Hawkins leading the way, we are taken on a whirlwind ride through the murky world of safecracking, Only a master inspector can catch a master criminal; and make no mistake, the criminal in this film is master level. You often hear the term that someone has ice water in their veins. Well, here is a criminal that indeed does. The film is riveting from beginning to end; enjoy.

I echo Mike Wilson's views on this film, it is the classic British crime drama. Jack Hawkins is superb (and I feel that John Gregson's TV portrayal of Gideon was based on this). It even has little touches of humour which succeed in making the movie real. I would also agree with Mike that the later Gideon of Scotland Yard is poor in comparison, if Jack Hawkins had played the character in the same manner as he played Supt. Halliday, it could have been perfect. The movie has just been re-issued in the UK (Feb. 2003) on VHS.

The Long Arm (1956)

A business in Westminster is burgled, and when the police arrive they are greeted by a nightwatchmen. The safe has been opened with a key and its contents stolen. The following day, however, it emerges that the nightwatchman was actually the thief in disguise, and the real nightwatchmen is in hospital with a burst appendix. Superintendent Tom Halliday (Jack Hawkins) and his new Detective Sergeant Ward (John Stratton) begin their hunt for the fraud.

With the help of his boss and friend Chief Superintendent Jim Malcolm (Geoffrey Keen), Halliday discovers that there have been more than a dozen safe-breaking jobs all across Britain, with each involving the same make of safe. With no suspects at the manufacturer, the case seems to have reached a dead end, until the thief strikes again and an innocent bystander is killed with the getaway car.

The vehicle is later found in a scrapyard, inside of which lies a newspaper that leads Halliday and Ward all the way to Snowdonia, North Wales, and a Mr Gilson, a deceased former employee of the safe manufacturer. The pair discover that there are twenty-eight identical safes in London. The most lucrative haul will come from one that is located at the Royal Festival Hall, where a trap is duly set for the thief...

This mid-fifties police procedural plays like an ever so slightly grittier episode of Dixon of Dock Green, with ever-reliable Jack Hawkins, famous at the time for playing resolute men of sturdy, sensible authority, as the investigating officer. An almost documentary style keeps this part of the realist school of detective drama, with only occasional moments of gentle humour, mostly between Halliday and his new sidekick, who, in a running gag that's more of a leisurely stroll, is forever interested in getting off work to see his girlfriend.

The cast are made up of dependable stalwarts of the era, with the likes of Geoffrey Keen (so often excellent in these sort of roles, who sometimes got the chance himself of playing the main detective in lower-budgeted B-films), Sydney Tafler (a big favourite of mine, here playing a character named 'Creasey', presumably because of big-name crime writer of the time John Creasey), and Ralph Truman. Ian Bannen also appears as the victim of the hit and run, to whom Halliday somewhat insensitively questions while on his death bed, and would go on to play the lead role in the amiable Scottish farce Waking Ned over forty years later.

A bunch of other actors with walk-on roles, such as Stafford Johns, would go on to appear as police officers again in the rather more grim Z Cars and Softly, Softly, a dramatic direction which would lead to The Sweeney and everything else that makes The Long Arm now seem antiquated and, despite its efforts at realism, a little unsophisticated.

That's probably ungenerous, as middle-class police investigating mostly non-violent crimes is no less realistic than cockney, blue-collar police chasing rapists, but it nonetheless feels more genteel when you have Hawkins' wife fussing about him being late for tea.

She is, by the way, one of only three women to be given any meaningful role, out of five who appear in the whole film, while most of the cast are middle-class, middle-aged men, with the only ones left over being a street-seller hawking his wares, and Nicholas Parsons as a beat constable.

In fact, thanks to a scene in which Halliday's son has a birthday party, and another in which a young urchin played by Frazer Hines offers a significant lead, there are several more prepubescent boys in the film than women.

Much of which you have to accept with a picture of this vintage, not least as these glimpses into a bygone era are often so interesting, with the location work in particular standing out.

The narrative itself may seem a little ho-hum, with the only action being an exciting finale in which Hawkins grips recklessly to the bonnet of an escaping car (the idea of handcuffing the villain not having occurred to the experienced detective).

The film isn't long and more focussed and markedly less grim than its spiritual successor Gideon's Day a couple of years later, in which Hawkins plays another Scotland Yard man struggling to juggle serious police work with his home life and family. The main difference there is that he has a teenage daughter instead of a young son, and his wife is rather less worried about him.

Jack Hawkins stars in "The Long Arm" from 1956. This film uses police procedural techniques from the day which are fascinating.

After a robbery takes place at a company, and the police somehow miss him, Scotland Yard Detective-Superintendent Tom Halliday gets the case. The strange thing is, the criminal opened the safe with a key. Halliday suspects an inside job.

After a lot of questioning and investigation, he finally finds a connection between a group of unsolved robberies where the safe was broken into was the safe itself, Rock Safe. Halliday and his partner (John Stratton) retrieve a list of people no longer working where the safes are manufactured.

One night, a young man (Stanley James) on his way to work sees the crook climbing down the front of a business. The man then runs to a car, and the car drives off. When the young man stands in the middle of the street to stop the car, he is mowed down. Questioning him is not much help, and he ultimately dies, making this a case of murder.

The film goes through every detail of the case, from finally locating the car, using a newspaper found there to trace a particular area in Wales, and ultimately narrowing down the where the next robbery will take place.

Interesting and well-acted, with Jack Hawkins doing a terrific job as a determined, caring superintendent and family man. What I loved the most is all the card files! A good example of the kind of hard work it took to solve a case before the age of computers and DNA.

Average thriller film. The Berlin festival award for the director Charles Frend is surprising.

A brilliant thriller, and the more brilliant for dealing only with non-violent criminality of an advanced technical kind, as the burglar in question is a professional who has worked out a system of foolproof and almost impeccable systematization of his craft, which never can exclude the human factor, though, - and naturally,. even he must commit mistakes. There is only one casualty, the young Ian Bannen in one of his first parts, and he acts it brillantly, like Errol Flynn in his first film part was a glorious dead body and nothing else. The cinematography is also excellent, and the climax is not missing. Jack Hawkins as the leading police officer is reliable as usual, and all others are also quite on the level. It's a brilliant film on a B level but rises up to A for its excellent handiwork and keeps you busy and engaged all the way, from the smallest minor details in the beginning to a sustained suspense in the end. Almost 10 points.

Stunning cinematography by Gordon Dines and fine directive variety is let down by a top down police procedural plot centering around a stale, elitist core of characters, somehow still espousing attitudes of the 1890's in late 1950's Britain.

It is a distinct relief when the story briefly veers into the street life of the era, away from the plummy inanity of the office bound protagonists - Jack Hawkins referring to the unseen masses as 'them', the polemic of Empire 101 still dominating the administrative and ruling classes of this era and sewn into the poker straight characters and asexual women strewn throughout the cinema of mid-century Britannia.

The Royal Festival Hall as a nod to modernism is not enough to blunt the appalling military and public school attitudes still dominating populist cinema at this point in time. The leather driving gloves of the James Mason school of acting prevalent in so much inflexible dross of post-war British film had thankfully just a few years left to run its course.

This wonderful film shot in London and Wales during late 1955 is a must for all lovers of 1950's British cinema and this late Ealing Studios masterpiece is as good as anything ever to leave the cutting room of that great British film institution. As simply a film the plot of an unsolvable robbery is very cleverly constructed and little by little the expert veteran detective (Hawkins) and his new sergeant nibble away at the clues, it may seem rather familiar but this is the template on which the likes of the TV Gideon of Scotland yard was built. Hawkins always excellent is brilliant throughout totally convincing as the career copper who loves his job. Back in the nineteen fifties the coppers always got their bad guy and no villain was beyond the law as the title infers, cynicism and shades of Gray would have to wait another decade or so more. Fans of the era such as my self sees a treasure trove of fifties stereotypes but stay at home house wives were the normal back then as was chain smoking drinking on the job if only a small beer and the odd whiskey for bigger problems, everyone wore an overcoat and a hat while London was mostly Gray dull damp smog-ed and still bombed out while car owner ship was still mostly for the better off. Please note the car park right outside the doors of the Royal Festival hall, then only a few years old, boy was parking handy back then. My old Dinky toy cars were in every day use Ford Pilot, Wolseley 4/44 police cars, a Jaguar mark on. Oh! Oh! the nostalgia and all in glorious black and white. Enjoy!

Charles Frend directs this film well, but it is dull and pedestrian. Jack Hawkins is in the police force and is trying to track down burglars involved in a killing. Jack Hawkins deserved again a better role, and he goes through the motions and looks tired. Dorothy Alison plays his wife and she deserved a better life other than making him ham sandwiches when he comes home. She is a typical 1950's stereotype of a woman with a single cause; making ' hubby ' happy. She as well as Hawkins are essentially good actors trapped in a dreary system of relentlessly mediocre ' realistic ' British films. But Frend as I said directs well and tries to make the best of the material with quite a lot of outside filming with a lot of authentic details of the period. There is one callous scene where Hawkins interrogates a man on the point of death, while the man's wife waits to visit him. The doctor only intervenes at the man's last gasp, and unseen you can imagine the wife's distress at Hawkins ( in the name of the law ) having his final moments instead of her. Sadly this reflects badly ( for me ) on the lack of humanity back then. I will not give away spoilers on who the killer is, and it is a genuine surprise. A pity about the long haul to get there, and like a lot of these well made main features of British cinema in the 1950's it has too much dialogue, but if you want to see London around that time sit back and enjoy. Sloane Square has not changed one bit, but then conservatism moves very, very slowly. A 5 for the direction and use of brilliant lighting and local colour.

Director Charles Frend does a splendid job with THE LONG ARM. He elicits strong performances from the entire cast (headed by the ever reliable Jack Hawkins) and the b&w photography is something to savour. I was fortunate to watch a very good DVD copy, and it brings out street scenes, landmarks of the London and Wales of the 1950s in high quality.

It is a time capsule. THE LONG ARM immediately precedes the "kitchen sink" period of the British cinema which began in the late 1950s, and you can still see very prim and proper behavior by all, young and old.

The script is predictable enough - after all it is half-documentary - but the dialogue keeps it ticking, and it includes some barbed remarks, and humor about marriage, dating, and other social concerns.

It is a well done film but perhaps the single thing that I will remember most vividly from watching it is Ursula Howells, the pretty lady who plays the part of Mrs Gilson, and who donates £5 towards Ian Bannen's widow. How beauty and a veneer of class can deceive...

British films of the 1950's stand a very good chance of being well-made and entertaining, and this is one of the best. We have this excellent film on DVD somewhere but I had forgotten just how good it is until it popped up on Talking Pictures TV channel. It had just started when I tuned in and within minutes I was hooked again. There is some superb, natural acting from Jack Hawkins (something he's very good at) and the dialogue between the principals is very well done. The story itself seems pretty standard stuff for a while, but once our man gets a break the leads come thick and fast. Then there's a lull before they work out who the villain must be and how to nab him, and it all follows perfectly believable lines all the way to the final showdown. A truly entertaining film.