A British crime thriller from 1956 for you all this week. ‘The Secret Place’ is set in the bombed out East End of London and centres around a kiosk attendant called Molly who is engaged to be married to a man who is involved with a criminal gang. The gang, based at a car dealership which also employs Molly’s brother, plan and later pull off a major jewel robbery. Molly gets dragged into the plans for the robbery and recruits a young teenage boy called Freddie, who has a a major crush on Molly. Molly needs Freddies help because Freddies father is a police officer and the gang need a police uniform in order to disguise one of the robbers so they can gain entry to the jewellers.

The gang escape with a large amount of jewels, some of which are too easily recognisable to sell quickly so one of the gang hides some of the jewels in Molly’s cherished record player without the knowledge of Molly.

Molly gives the record player to Freddie and when the gang find out that Freddie has hold of the record player and its valuable contents, they turn on Freddie and hunt him down.

This is an excellent film dealing with a number of themes such as good people being led into bad conduct, a teenager’s awakening but unrequited desire for Molly and how some women’s choice of ‘bad boys’ can end up in their ruination.

I was unaware of this film until recently but I throughly enjoyed this crime melodrama and I hope that you will enjoy it too.