The Secret Place (film)
The Secret Place is a 1957 British crime film that was the directorial debut of Clive Donner. It stars Belinda Lee, Ronald Lewis, and David McCallum in a supporting role. Plot. In this crime melodrama, set in a badly bombed district in the East End of London after the war, a gang carries out a diamond robbery and an adolescent boy, Freddie Haywood, discovers their loot hidden in his home. Freddie has a crush on a kiosk attendant, Molly Wilson, who is engaged to Gerry Carter, a member of the gang. After the robbery, from a  jeweller's in Hatton Garden, Gerry hides the diamonds inside Molly's record player. Not knowing this, Molly gives the player to Freddie as a thankyou gift. Freddie discovers the diamonds and the gang go after him. Production. Clive Donner had been an editor on "Genevieve", "I am a Camera" and other films. This was his first film as director. Filming took place at Pinewood Studios, starting in June 1956. Anthony Steel was meant to play the male lead but he broke his contract with Rank and was replaced by Ronald Lewis. The film also gave David McCallum his breakthrough  role. Reception. "Variety" said "the East End setting among London’s bombed sites provides an intriguing background for this crime meller. But the story unspools too casually, dissipating too much of the potential tension.. As it stands, it's a modest b.o. bet. moderately entertaining." Lindsay Anderson, writing in the "New Statesman" called the opening sequence "the most exciting sequence seen on a (wide) screen in this country in the last five years" and said the film was "a remarkably assured and craftsmanlike start" for Donner's career. The "Monthly Film Bulletin" said the film "gains strongly over the average  British crime thriller in its concern to establish a realistic background and setting. The East End locations are well chosen and freshly observed; the characters (apart from the two criminals, who seem rather unduly public school) quite convincingly inhabit this world of grey back streets and derelict bomb-sites. The balance between action sequences (the neatly-staged robbery and the final chase) and character study is well sustained, and Belinda Lee gives her best performance to date." The British Film Institute praised the "remarkable debut screenplay by Linette Perry, which manages to intertwine the generic conventions of the heist thriller  with a simple, but poetic, moral drama. In Perry's world the secret places stretch beyond the physical – the record player, gang hideouts and derelict buildings – into the hearts of the young protagonists. Faced with opportunity and misguided by love, the characters are all confronted with their own buried selfishness." "Filmink" called it a "minor classic" and claimed that it the one film in Belinda Lee's career that comes close to cult status.