With its clunky dialogue, dodgy acting and funereal pace, this revenge 'thriller' would appear to have little going for it. What drags it out of the ordinary is its wonderful sense of location. This is way ahead of its time - it would be another 7 years before 'Room at the Top' ushered in that brief period of gritty social-realist dramas that would make the inner city landscape so familiar to cinema audiences. In 'The Long Memory', the desolate mudflats of the Thames estuary are used to brilliant effect to convey the spiritual desolation of Davidson, while the run-down streets and shabby domestic interiors of Gravesend vividly conjure up the dreariness of 1950s Britain.
Review of The Long Memory
