Sapphire

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Henry D @Henry_Domke 12 hrs ago A very attractive film, with good cinematography, editing, costumes and sets. The story was a conventional whodunit, but more enjoyable than we expected. The excellent print made the visual qualities especially apparent and helped raise our rating. See more Simon T @MovieTart Oct 7, 2026 Well-intentioned and (mostly) well-acted murder mystery potboiler that nevertheless has some quite shocking racist tropes, despite wanting to claim the moral high ground. As a snapshot of late-50s post-Windrush London, it's interesting, and the frequent shots of parts of the wintery city are genuinely affecting. Otherwise, there's a lot of smoking, and Nigel Patrick gets to take off and put on his overcoat throughout the running time. Johnny Dankworth on the soundtrack. See more Noel L @RT15930389 Jul 15, 2026 Maybe for it's time, it was a great mystery. But in todays society, this film is very hard to tolerate See more Becky F @BXFury Jan 5, 2026 Great film. So much more sophisticated than a lot of the cringe that passes for social commentary or progressive culture these days. Would recommend it to anyone who thinks progressive culture didn’t exist until the 21st century If Mississippi burning was set in the relative tolerance and mild climate of the uk then it would be this film; A fascinating time capsule of attitudes and opinions from a London that was just about to to hit the 1960s and a revolutionary era of social change See more Matthew B @RT07450941 Sep 17, 2023 Basil Dearden may not have seemed like a director who would ever defy expectations or challenge societal norms. By 1959, he had directed or co-directed over a couple of dozen movies without anyone gasping at either his cinematic brilliance or his radical subject matter. This changed suddenly with Sapphire, which ushered in a number of social justice movies by Dearden. It was not that Dearden ceased to be an establishment figure. His heroes are police officers. Nonetheless Dearden took advantage of a rise in liberal attitudes to make a ground-breaking British movie about race hatred and mixed ethnicity in Britain. By today's standards, Sapphire may seem mild, perhaps even offensive. However in 1959 the attitudes displayed in Sapphire were unusually enlightened. England was still a profoundly racist country. Black people rarely appeared in prominent roles in films. Prejudice reached alarming peaks. The year before Sapphire was released, there were racially-motivated riots in Notting Hill. That was the background against which Sapphire was made. On the surface, the film appeared to be yet another police procedural drama. Twelve minutes into the film there is a twist. When Dr Robbins (Earl Cameron) turns up at the police station, Hazard and Learoyd are shocked to discover that Sapphire's brother is black. What is more, he is not even her half-brother. They both share the same parents and are bi-racial, despite their physical differences in appearance. This takes the investigation in a new direction. Now that they know that Sapphire is ‘coloured' as they put it, Hazard and Learoyd have to consider the possibility that this is a hate crime. Janet Green's script is a cunningly constructed labyrinth of misdirection and red herrings. While it works well as a mystery movie, Sapphire is a whodunit with a difference. It is about the consequences of the murder. The question of who committed the murder is secondary to that. Sapphire's death unearths the whole range of prejudices against black people, some hidden or low level, some blatant and violent. There can be no happy ending here. A murderer is caught, but a family is shattered by hatred and murder. Racism is just as strong as it ever was, even if one criminal is punished. "We didn't solve anything, Phil," Hazard sadly observes; "We just picked up the pieces". I wrote a longer appreciation of Sapphire on my blog page, and drew comparisons with Dearden's later movie Victim if you would like to read more of my thoughts: https://themoviescreenscene.wordpress.com/2021/02/03/hidden-lives-loves-and-hates-sapphire-1959-and-victim-1961/ See more May 14, 2020 Slow plot development, but chilling in it's racial tension. I was a child in the UK at this time and did not realize how bad things were. See more Read all reviews

Sapphire

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