The British New Wave came a decade earlier than advertised with Robert Hamer's downbeat postwar thriller. In a dank East End of ration-book misery, dosshouses and black marketeering, a world-weary housewife is shaken by the sudden reappearance of an old lover, now an escaped convict on the run. Restored by the BFI in 2012, Robert Hamer's solo directing debut is now recognised as one of the classics of British cinema's golden late-1940s.