Dancing with Crime

Richard Attenborough stars in this exuberant crime drama set in a suburban palais de danse, where dodgy deals take place behind closed doors.

Introduced by Josephine Botting, Curator of Fiction, BFI National Archive

  • Director

    John Paddy Carstairs

  • With

    Richard Attenborough, Sheila Sim, Barry Jones, Barry K. Barnes

  • UK 1947. 82min

  • 35mm nitrate

  • Certificate

    PG

Honest cabbie Ted Peters is making good on civvy street after being demobbed, but his army pal Dave is tempted into crime and, through their friendship, Ted finds himself drawn into the seedy underworld of post-war London. This neat thriller features newly-weds Attenborough and Sim as a sleuthing couple, with Diana Dors popping up in an early role. Carstairs directs with verve, keeping his camera mobile, and capturing the gloom and grime of Soho nightlife. This original nitrate print, on 1945 stock, came to the BFI in the mid-1970s from Rank Film Laboratories. At nearly eighty years old, there is occasional scratching and repair work, but the print still has plenty of life in it.

Josephine Botting