Projecting the Archive

Nightbeat (aka Night Beat)

+ intro by Josephine Botting, BFI Curator

In this bleak post-war noir, Christine Norden, who was born 100 years ago, stars as a seductive chanteuse who vamps a returning squaddie.

  • Director

    Harold Huth

  • With

    Christine Norden, Ronald Howard, Maxwell Reed, Anne Crawford

  • UK 1948. 96min

  • 35mm

  • Certificate

    12A

  • A BFI National Archive print

Back on civvy street, a pair of demobbed soldiers decide on a career in the police force. But the austerity of post-war Britain makes it hard to resist the illicit ‘perks’ of the job and when one falls for a scheming nightclub singer, he’s drawn deeper into criminality. Christine Norden, in her film debut, is perfectly cast as the temptress and this screening celebrates the centenary of her birth on 28 December 1924. Though her film career was brief, she had an electric screen presence and could have been a leading British femme fatale if her potential had been realised.

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