No Trees in the Street

Based on the play by Ted Willis, the film is set in the years just before World War II, when England hadn't completely dug itself out of the worldwide depression. Melvyn Hayes is featured as an aimless teenager, who tries to escape his squalid surroundings by entering a life of crime. He falls in with local hoodlum Herbert Lom, who holds the rest of the slum citizens in the grip of fear including Hayes' own family. No Trees in the Street chronicles Hayes' sordid progress from nickel-and-dime thefts to murder.

The whole world's gone mad. Stark raving mad. No Trees in the Street is directed by J. Lee Thompson and adapted from his own play by Ted Willis. It stars Sylvia Syms, Herbert Lom, Ronald Howard, Melvyn Hayes and Stanley Holloway. Music is by Laurie Johnson and cinematography by Gilbert Taylor. Capturing a young tearaway, a London copper tells the youngster a story from a couple of decades earlier. It's about a family living in the slums of the East End, of a pretty daughter getting involved with the local racketeer, of the young impressionable son turning to crime, it's of their fates, trials and tribulations. Part kitchen sink plotter, part noir melodrama, No Trees in the Street is thin on story but big on heart. Ted Willis is guilty of not fully pushing the drama through in his adaptation, getting caught between making a potent anti-crime piece and that of a mawkish "we had it tough back then" nostalgia trip. That said, the tale does hold tight throughout, and all the characters are nicely drawn and placed within a depressingly real backdrop. The means, motives and decisions involving some of them are cutting, keeping the narrative edgy, while the cast performances are bang on the money for such a screenplay. Bonus comes with Taylor's (Ice Cold in Alex/Repulsion) photography, which come the second half of film dresses it all up in noir nirvana. 6/10