Forgotten Film Noir: Never Let Go (1960)
Can Peter Sellers be menacing??? Bet on it!
One of my great movie regrets is missing Noir City 18 (“Noir Knows No Boundaries,” 2020) the year Never Let Go was included in the lineup of international film noir titles. But when I saw the DVD at a used bookstore, I snagged it faster than a booster1 can jack a car, precisely the way Never Let Go opens. Stealing cars may be the essential element behind Never Let Go (a non-comedic role for Peter Sellers), but the film is a focused character study between two men who may be more alike than they realize.
John Cummings (Richard Todd) is a cosmetics salesman who’s outwardly confident despite his sagging sales figures and chronic tardiness to important meetings. His new car, a Ford Anglia, has placed Cummings on top of the world, not only because it gives him a sense of status, but primarily because his job as a salesman demands reliable transportation. But when Cummings discovers his car has been stolen, his world turns upside down in a desperate attempt to recover it. Why not just let the insurance company take care of it? Caught in the enormous gap between wealth and poverty, Cummings put all his money into the car, with none left to insure it.
We know what’s happened to the Anglia: A young thug named Tommy Towers (Adam Faith, right) stole the car, taking it to his boss Lionel Meadows (Peter Sellers, left), who runs a legitimate auto body shop but deals in stolen cars on the side. Cummings believes someone had to have seen the crime, maybe Alfie (Mervyn Johns), who runs the nearby newsstand. Seeking help from the police, Cummings learns that 80% of all stolen cars are recovered. But what if he’s in the 20% that aren’t?
Cummings soon begins to suspect Meadows had the car stolen, keeping it in his garage until he can modify and sell it. He’s right, but Cummings can’t prove anything. In a sense, Never Let Go begins as a sort of British version of Bicycle Thieves (1948), but becomes a tale of obsession, following two characters: one seeking to regain something, another seeking to hold onto something.
As Cummings begins to obsess over the car, his wife Anne (Elizabeth Sellars) grows concerned for him, knowing that his obsession is a symptom of something deeper. She tells him that his fixation has occurred before, that it’s just “another dream. This one’s going to turn into a nightmare,” she tells him. “Let it go.”
Anne realizes her husband isn’t strong enough to keep this crusade going and doesn’t need to prove he is to earn her respect and love. Yet he’s consumed with anger, constantly speculating what course he should take next.
Yet Meadows also wants to be something he’s not: respectable. While he employs several knowledgeable men to work on his cars and a gang of lackeys to steal them, his only tools consist of fear and violence.
These tools work well enough on his thugs, but Meadows can’t understand why his girl Jackie (Carol White) isn’t more appreciative. After all, he’s given her everything (except her freedom), yet she only desires to be away from him. Meadows is as lecherous as The Asphalt Jungle’s Alonzo Emmerich (Louis Calhern), only Emmerich understands and mourns the consequences of his actions; Meadows doesn’t. Peter Sellers plays Meadows as a sadistic, charmless tyrant who longs for respect, but only knows one way to get it. (The film also provides an equally interesting comparison between Anne and Jackie.)
Cummings and Meadows want to be something they’re not, threatened by elements and situations beyond their control. Ironically they both are part of endeavors - sales and the criminal lifestyle - that demand their players keep moving and stay organized, otherwise, you’re faced with disaster. We know that Cummings and Meadows will eventually face each other, and in the film’s final moments, the two men go at it in a showdown that would fit right in as the finale of a Hollywood Western.
Never Let Go is a terrific noir thriller with outstanding performances and an excellent score by John Barry. The film is available on DVD but desperately needs a Blu-ray release. In the meantime, you can find the movie on YouTube.
In British slang, a thief, especially a shoplifter