Cloudburst (1951)
Directed by Francis Searle

Film Review

Hammer's bid to break into the American market got off to a flying start with this grimly realistic crime drama adapted from a play by Leo Marks, one of the earliest and best examples of film noir the studio put its name to.  The gimmick of casting a charismatic American actor in the lead role, here Robert Preston, was one that Hammer would frequently employ in the 1950s to assist its transatlantic distribution, not that Cloudburst, a solid drama, needed any such device to find an American audience.  With the war still fresh in everyone's minds, the compelling tale of a man unable to adjust his moral code after the experience of war is one that would have struck a chord on either side of the Atlantic, and it remains one of Hammer's more interesting and profound films (as worthy of interest as the studio's subsequent horror output including Dracula (1958) and The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)).  There's a bleakness to this film that is rarely found in the studio's other films of this era, but there is also a powerful emotional resonance which suddenly hits home in the devastating final scene.  It also has some great lines:   'Official channels don't exist. There are only official oceans or official sewers.'

Cloudburst owes its sober authenticity to the insights brought to the source play by its author Leo Marks.  During the war, Marks was busily engaged as a senior cryptographer, running an office in the Special Operations Executive which supported resistance agents across occupied Europe.  Marks was au fait not only with the mechanics of codebreaking but also with the moral issues appertaining to war, and it is the morality of personal combat, specifically how this differs between peace- and war-time, that is at the heart of his play.  The film's central character, a dedicated codebreaker played with admirable conviction by Robert Preston, is a noble but flawed individual who is incapable of resetting his moral compass after the war  and who consequently believes that to avenge the death of his wife (an engimatic Elizabeth Sellars) he must deal with the culprits himself.  In wartime, his actions might have been laudable; now they are liable to send him to the scaffold.

In the character John Graham we see a template for those other morally self-sufficient protagonists that would feature in much of Hammer's subsequent output, from the steely-willed Professor Quatermass to the diabolically driven scientist Dr Frankenstein, characters who consider themselves above the morality of civilised society.  Graham not only knowingly operates outside the law, he seems to revel in the freedom that his supposed moral superiority gives him.  He takes a sadistic pleasure in torturing one of his victims and then murdering him in cold blood, justifying each of his crimes with the warped morality that his wartime exploits have left him with.  Cloudburst isn't just a compelling entertainment, it also touches on some deep philosophical issues - the inconsistency of human morality and the difficulty of altering one's personal ethics as circumstances change.  Those harbouring under the misconception that Hammer's films lack depth and real human interest will be surprised by what this one has to offer.

Film Synopsis

London, 1946.  A former resistance operative during the war, John Graham now runs a code-breaking department that deciphers coded messages which may result in the prosecution of war criminals.  His pregnant wife Carol is concerned he may be overworking and urges him to take a break.  They are examining the spot in the country where they intend to build a house when Carol is run over by a car and killed.  Before the car drives off, Graham catches a glimpse of its driver and passenger, whom he later realises are a pair of criminals on the run from the police after murdering a night watchman.  Rather than assist the police in catching these two, Graham embarks on his own private vendetta and uses his special training to find and punish them.  For him, the war is far from over...