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Continuing the narrative theme and structure of Pool of London (1950), Jon
Penington's near-forgotten The Heart Within is another crime melodrama set in
London docklands, apparently the favoured location for representations of
London's black community before it moved from the peripheries to the centre of
the capital at the end of the decade.
Like Pool of London, the film's intermixing of crime genre conventions, a
'colour problem' storyline and documentary-style location photography places it
closer to social realism than to the comparatively sensationalist 'social
problem' films - Sapphire (d. Basil Dearden, 1959) and Flame in the Streets (d.
Roy Ward Baker, 1961) - that followed the 1958 Notting Hill race riots.
The antagonistic relationship between the two compatriots, Victor Conway and
Joe Martell represents an unusual departure from the period's dominant image of
an undifferentiated West Indian community. Joe is a rogue in search of easy money;
Victor is a conscientious, hard-working man. Both, though, are
victims of white prejudice (vividly expressed in a policeman's words, "if I had
my way, I'd send the lot of them packin'"), which, in turn, justifies Victor's
belief that "a coloured man is guilty until he's proved innocent". It is,
however, thanks to the generous help and conscience of white men (Danny and his
grandfather) that Victor does manage to prove his innocence. Like Pool of
London's Johnny, Victor is essentially dependent on the good will of 'white
hands', in keeping with the paternalism of a Britain still shedding its Empire.
The crime theme, dockland settings, and warm rapport between foreign-born
fugitive and child prefigure J. Lee Thompson's Tiger Bay (1959). In The Heart
Within, paper-boy Danny (a 15-year-old David Hemmings) assists a West Indian
docker; in Tiger Bay, Hayley Mills' wastrel befriends a Polish seaman-murderer.
The Notting Hill riots took place during Tiger Bay's location shooting, which
may partly explain why, unlike in The Heart Within, black faces appear only
fleetingly. Television offered slightly better opportunities for black actors:
Earl Cameron, Pauline Henriques and Gloria Simpson had all appeared in the dramatised documentary A Man from the Sun (BBC, tx. 8/11/1956); Simpson and
Frank Singuineau were later the first black actress and actor to appear in a
soap opera.
The use of the 'Kings of the Caribbean' calypso band not only adds a
'colourful' tone to the grubby locations, but was also a sound commercial choice
given the popularity of such music at the time.
Eleni Liarou
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1. Violet (2:23)
Monthly Film Bulletin review
