Basil Dearden's Sapphire tells the story of a young lady named Sapphire who is found dead in a park, murdered in cold blood. The film focuses on the police investigation which follows, as these men attempt to get to the bottom of who is responsible for this crime. While Sapphire is a film that could easily be described as a police procedural film, as we follow the lead inspector, Nigel Patrick who is hot on the trail, the film uses this tried and true narrative lynchpin to explore racism in a time which it was very prevalant on a day-to-day basis. As Nigel patrick investigates the murder, he discovers that Saphire was actually a "colored' individual, something which is surprising to him and his fellow investigators, given the young woman's lighter complexion. Given it's the 1950s, when Racist-fueled prejudice was prevalent, this discovery fruther complicates the case, bringing out a host of bigotry which threatens to derail the investigation into who is responsible for the murder of this young woman. The police procedural is merely the through-line in Sapphire, with its real intentions centered around the British Bigotry and outright racism that was prevalent in the 1950s, particularly towards commonwealth immigrants. The film doesn't pretend that these type of prejudice are easy to fix, at one point even having Sapphire's brother, a doctor himself, telling the chief investigator that he has cured all sorts of illnesses, but nothing like this, referring to the toxic racism that exists in society. There is no denying Sapphire's social relevance and its important subject matter, but the film does at times feel horrible dated, succumbing at times to its own prejudice stigma which it exposes. Throughout the investigation some of the main clues which aid the detectives in uncovering the truth are outrageous stereotypes that by today's standards come off as incredibly patronizing and even racist, though I think these issues never diminish the overall intentions of the film. Basil Dearden's Sapphire is an incredibly edgy piece of filmmaking, for the time period, that attempts to reveal the social injustices of the time, and while it's severely out-dated in ways, its overall message rings very load and true even today.
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AuthorLove of all things cinema brought me here. Archives
June 2023
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