Sapphire

A young woman is killed. Detectives Nigel Patrick and Michael Craig search for her killer in this deliberate police procedural. What's distinctive about it is that the murder victim is Black.

Basil Dearden's movie was considered groundbreaking at the time of its release, and more than sixty years later, it's easy to see why. In a Britain in which "Wogs begin at Calais" and people who hailed from Wales were looked on as a lesser breed, Blacks in British cinema were even rarer than in mainstream American movies; they didn't even have train porter and servant roles. So the investigators' journey, taking them into the subculture in London, with its vibrant night life, and smiling, fake subservience, remains a bit of a shocker today. even after a half century of Blaxploitation flicks.

It also makes the point that policemen aren't instruments of justice. In the end, all they can do is be dustmen, restoring a thin veneer of civilization to a broken world.