Rent Wide Boy (1952)

A Special Price for You, Squire - Wide Boy review by CH

Jonathon Green's huge three-volume Dictionary of Slang dates the term “spiv” to 1929, with possible origins in the Romany for sparrow, a creature whom they deem to live on others' leavings. One certainly recognises the puffed-chest type, and they are abundant in Ken Hughes's first film, Wide Boy (1952): the title is a synonym, the geezer in question a lodging-house denizen played – jaunty hat, and all – by Sydney Tafler who, to continue the avian theme, hawks dodgy goods from a pavement suitcase while forever being moved on by the Law.

From a story by Rex Rienits, all this runs at just over an hour – and is better packed than any such suitcase. In an instant we learn that Tafler's girlfriend (the glamorous and tragic Susan Shaw) has tastes way beyond the proceeds of what one might call his day-job. A sequence of events in this brilliant encapsulation of post-war London – high and low – leads to a series of night-time encounters in a bombed-out Paddington house.

It does not give away too much to say that this is the classic case of a blackmailer who cannot take his winnings and walk away. After all, having been given a bottle of champagne in a smart joint, Susan Shaw naturally expects many more where that came from.

Tafler's performance captures exactly the bluff of the vulnerable at heart; those who, lacking the graft to fulfil their dreams, snarl when put on the spot. That is his tragedy, so well caught is this terrible descent (as it would also be in Rienits's screenplay Noose for a Lady). Ken Hughes had a fine sense of English noir: light and shade of course, train whistles and all, but also funds kept in a shoe and concealed by a sock in a wardrobe which also houses the whisky reserved for celebrations and commiserations.

Never over-doing it, Hughes puts the dram into dramatic.

To call something a small triumph is unfair. To adapt Gertrude Stein: a triumph is a triumph is a triumph.