Never Let Go (1960) - film review

John Cummings is an unsuccessful cosmetics salesman who barely earns enough money to keep his wife and two children.   He can just about afford the repayments on the new car he has recently purchased but is unable to pay for the insurance.  When his car is stolen, he is thrown into a panic.  Without his car, he will not be able to do his job effectively, and if he loses his job, he could lose everything.  The police offer Cummings little hope that the car will be recovered and so he sets about finding it for himself.  He questions a newspaper vendor who witnessed the theft of the car and discovers the identity of the man who stole it, a hard up youth named Tommy.  The latter is in the employ of a ruthless gangland boss, Lionel Meadows who will stop at nothing to protect the little empire he has built up.  Cummings’ determination to find his car soon turns into an obsession.  First he loses his job, then his wife abandons him, and ultimately he is drawn into violent showdown with Meadows...

Having established himself as a superlative comedy performer in a series of hit British comedies – including The Naked Truth (1957) and I’m All Right Jack (1959) - Peter Sellers was keen to take on a tough dramatic role to avoid being typecast in future films.   He had the opportunity to do just that when he landed the part of a psychopathic gangster boss in this hard-edged thriller, in which he starred opposite Richard Todd, another major British actor of the period.

Never Let Go may be considered something of a landmark film for British cinema, with its harrowingly realistic portrait of the kind of gangland violence that had become endemic in London by the late 1950s.   Director John Guillermin had cut his teeth making film documentaries and this shows in the striking realism that he brings to the film.  It is a pity that Guillermin’s efforts are compromised by a mediocre script which fails to make the characters much more than thinly sketched caricatures who have a nauseating habit of speaking in clichés.

The script is the only weak element in this film and this deficiency is easily forgiven given the high calibre of the work in every other department.   Cinematographer Christopher Challis uses light and shade effectively, as in the classic films noirs, to build tension and lend an aura of menace and oppression which the script singularly fails to convey.  The performances from the supporting cast are varied but the contributions from the leads, Richard Todd and Peter Sellers, are admirable.  

Todd is convincing as a pathetic middle-aged man trying desperately to make something of his life (a far cry from his previous heroic roles) whilst Sellers is utterly terrifying as a sadistic thug with a serious anger management problem.  John Guillermin would go on to make better films than this – The Towering Inferno (1974) and Death on the Nile (1978) being just two of his subsequent achievements - but Never Let Go is still an effective and compelling thriller, memorable for Peter Sellers’ relentlessly nasty portrayal.  Can the man who beats up women and casually squashes a pet reptile in this film really be the same man that makes us laugh our guts out in the Pink Panther films?

© filmsdefrance.com 2009


Forgive me for cutting to the chase, but this film is Da Bomb!  This is a classic British film noir.  It is as if film noir - defunct in a play-it-safe America - hopped the Pond and took root in early 60s England.  It’s all here.  A little man in over his head in a potentially dangerous situation.  In pursuing irrational revenge/justice, the hero alienates his own loved ones and endangers his societal position.  The use of shadows and darkness to convey meaning.  A villain, portrayed by Peter Sellers (of all people), who is off-the-charts evil.  The protagonist himself is not entirely likeable.  If you just see this for Peter Sellers’s performance, you’re doing yourself a huge favour.  He is the picture of seething, smirking psychosis.  This is an underestimated role by Sellers, one of his truly great performances.  He makes Richard Widmark and James Cagney look like schoolyard bullies.  

While the protagonist has been wronged, his pursuit of his stolen car is itself ambiguous.  The film suggests the protagonist has had some thwarted petty-bourgeois ambitions - his position at the company he works for is a little tenuous at best.  The car is both a status symbol and a key element in his work.  When the policeman tells him to forget the car and the organized crime figure played by Sellers will go away for an even longer time in jail, the protagonist doesn’t care about the larger picture.  He doesn’t really care about justice.  All he wants is his car back.  He is prepared to endanger his life and family for this seemingly petty end.  

The actor who plays the self-serving office climber/worm is a wonderfully smirky performance.   Underestimated also are the performances by the actors playing the gangster moll and her youthful, criminal underling sometime-boyfriend.  It’s wonderful how they scurry and squirm when they think their whole world is collapsing upon them.  When the protagonist’s wife tells him she’s leaving for good, it is perhaps arbitrary in the existential sense that she changes her mind at the last minute.  She might well have been gone for good.  

The final confrontation between the protagonist and the crime boss is an elemental struggle between Hatred and Evil in which, Nietzsche fashion, the fighter and the fought almost become one - mirror images of each other.  Again, I praise the performance of Peter Sellers here.  It is both frightening and captivating.  The film captures a world of Fear and Hopelessness.  Any histories of film noir should take account of this film. And any bios of Peter Sellers ignoring his plunge-into-darkness performance here are being negligent.  I would suggest people start a cult around this film, but really it deserves the largest possible audience.

© Greg Cameron (Surrey, B.C., Canada) 2011  

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