They Drive by Night

Taut British noir. set mostly after dark and indoors, about an innocent man on the run for a crime he did not commit (Emlyn Williams), the girl who helps him (Anna Konstam with a blonde perm), not quite a tart but with a heart of gold, and a creepy serial killer (Ernest Thesiger).

Interesting for its inversion of the usual values of 1930s British films, in which the lower classes tend to be either comic or villainous or both. Here the murderer has the accent, the education, the aesthetic taste and the comfortable house while virtually all the other characters share the camaraderie of the working class, which includes a disinclination to say too much to the police.

A number of similarities with Hitchcock films of the period, in particular "Young And Innocent", which also has a falsely accused man and a girl who believes in him trying to find the real murderer in a transport café and a dance hall.