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The Long Arm (USA: The Third Key) is a 1956 British film noir police procedural crime film starring Jack Hawkins. The film, which was based on a screenplay by Robert Barr and Janet Green, was directed by Charles Frend and produced by Michael Balcon. It was shot on location in London and Snowdonia in North Wales.

The Long Arm
British film poster
Directed by	Charles Frend
Written by	Robert Barr Janet Green
Produced by	Michael Balcon
Starring	Jack Hawkins
Cinematography	Gordon Dines
Edited by	Gordon Stone
Music by	Gerard Schurmann
Production company	Ealing Studios
Distributed by	Rank Film Distributors (UK)
Release date	June 1956 (1956-06) (UK[1])
Running time	96 minutes
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English

Two years later Hawkins played a similar role in John Ford's Gideon's Day, a film based on books by John Creasey.

Plot

When police respond to a burglar alarm at premises in Long Acre, Central London, they find nothing amiss after meeting the nightwatchman, who allows them to search the premises. However, the next day the safe, which had been opened with a key, is found empty. Supt Tom Halliday (Jack Hawkins) and his new Detective Sergeant, Ward (John Stratton), begin searching for the fraudulent nightwatchman.

Halliday deduces that the false nightwatchman has committed 14 safebreaking jobs across the country, all on the same type of safe, and all with keys. Visiting the safe maker, Halliday gets the names of all current and former staff, but they are all cleared. When another safe is opened a bystander is run over by the getaway car. The victim manages to pass limited information to the police before dying. The hit-and-run vehicle is found in a scrapyard. The car has been stolen from a Mrs Elliot. Inside they find a newspaper that leads them to a garage in North Wales and to a Mr Gilson, a deceased former employee of the safe maker.

Halliday finds that there are 28 more safes of the same type in London. He also finds that the thief is being tipped off by an insurance agent about which safes have a lot of cash in them . The police arrange with the owner of a safe in the Royal Festival Hall to let the insurance agent know about gala nights, which generate a lot of cash. They tail the insurance agent to a meeting with Mrs Elliot, the woman whose car was stolen. She is identified as Mrs Gilson, the wife of the apparently dead safe key maker.

Halliday and Ward deduce that Gilson faked his own death after spending years making duplicate keys for all the safes his company produced. Gilson hits the Royal Festival Hall, but the detectives are waiting. After a short scuffle Mrs Gilson arrives in a sports car. Halliday jumps on the bonnet and breaks the windscreen as Ward chases down Gilson on foot. Both are arrested and the case is solved.

Cast

Reception

The film premiered at Gaumont Haymarket in London on 22 June 1956.[1] However, the reviewer for The Times was not impressed, and found the story implausible and "not quite clever enough" even though it used a documentary filming style.[2] It won the Silver Bear for an Outstanding Single Achievement award at the 6th Berlin International Film Festival.[3]

References

External links

• The Long Arm at the British Film Institute
• The Long Arm at IMDb

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