Streaming Both Sides of the Law (1953) Online

Both Sides of the Law (1953)iMDB Rating: 6.9
Date Released : 11 January 1954
Genre : Drama
Stars : Anne Crawford, Peggy Cummins, Rosamund John, Terence Morgan. A pseudo-documentary in style with an emphasis on the daily work and routine of women police built around three different story lines. The first involves 18-year-old (in the film) Peggy Cummins who is picked up for shoplifting but let off lightly. She has a small child, an often-absent husband and mother-in-law trouble. To compound that she takes up with a petty hoodlum who commits a jewel ..." />
Movie Quality : BRrip
Format : MKV
Size : 700 MB

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A pseudo-documentary in style with an emphasis on the daily work and routine of women police built around three different story lines. The first involves 18-year-old (in the film) Peggy Cummins who is picked up for shoplifting but let off lightly. She has a small child, an often-absent husband and mother-in-law trouble. To compound that she takes up with a petty hoodlum who commits a jewel robbery. The second story tells of a young girl who deserts the Army to marry a boy who needs her and commits bigamy in the process, but it all works out. The third story is about a baby who is mistreated by its father and step-mother, but is reunited, through police work, with its real mother.

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Review :

Absorbing

Directed by one of the few women directors in the 1950s, 'Street Corner' concentrates on several women police officers going about their work. Several negative comments are made by the characters in the film about 'cops in skirts' but the film shows how capable they are. Nothing is mentioned about their home lives, they are people with a job who get on with it. Made in the early fifties it gives a foretaste of the social changes to come. The women policeman are defined by their work not their relationships. Most of the incidents are 'domestic' but there is robbery and violence too in the film.

The film is located in London and it is startling to see in the film early housing estates being used by the characters. It is a cliche in modern British films to have the housing estate as a nexus of crime and poverty. In this film they are look clean and the lifts work. The film has a similar feel to the classic Ealing film 'The Blue Lamp'.

The male actors are bland but the female actors are accomplished British performers, Rosamund John, Barbara Murray, Anne Crawford, Sarah Lawson, Eleanor Summerfield, Peggy Cummins etc. Dora Bryan and Thora Hird are hilarious in bit parts. Films like these from the fifties need re-appraisal as they are more than the sum of their parts. A modest but absorbing film, I'm pleased I picked it up in a sale at a video shop.