The Long Memory (1953)

Interesting facts

• Filmed in: Pinewood Studios

The Long Memory is a black-and-white 1953 British crime film directed by Robert Hamer, starring John Mills, John McCallum and Elizabeth Sellars. The screenplay was by Hamer and Frank Harvey based on the 1951 novel The Long Memory by Howard Clewes.

Production

The novel was published in 1951. Film rights were bought by producer Hugh Stewart, who made the film through his company, Europa.

The film was financed through British Film-Makers, a short lived production scheme that operated in Britain in the early 1950s as a co operative venture between the Rank Organisation and the National Film Finance Corporation (NFFC), whereby Rank would provide 70% of finance and the rest came from the NFFC.

Stewart recalled, "John Davis [head of Rank] wanted all producers to be independent, so the Rank Organisation made a deal with Europa Films (my own company) to hire my services, hence every film I made was made through Europa. It was always ‘The Rank Organisation presents ...’ on the credits but it was called ‘Hugh Stewart Productions’, I always got that. John Davis was a very tough character but I got on very well with him.

Stewart said he wanted to cast John McCallum as the detective because "I knew his face would express the terrible anguish in his instinctive knowledge that his wife was lying."

The film was made at Pinewood Studios and on location in the North Kent Marshes on the Thames Estuary, around Gravesend, and at Shad Thames, a street next to Tower Bridge in central London. Many of the houses shown in the film were demolished soon afterwards.

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