hammondjh-00479
A seemingly white girl is found murdered on Hampstead Heath. When it transpires she was mixed race, it opens up a myriad of characters from the deeply prejudiced to the professional Police detective who keeps an open mind all the way. The end? The very last person you'd expect, thereby making this another British Film Classic that shall hopefully be shown more often.
dougdoepke
So who killed Sapphire. That's the movie's plot; however, the underlying theme is racial prejudice, a generally touchy topic at the time, even for British films. As I recall, the movie got more coverage than usual for a foreign release, at least in the LA area. The lovely Sapphire may look White, but genetically she's half-Black. Her troubles start when she "passes for White" in a London society still riven by prejudice. Engaged to the son of a reputable White family, her racial make-up causes rifts within the circle once her heritage is known. Naturally, the suspects start off with the family of her intended.The twin threads of race and murder are skillfully woven into a difficult screenplay that nevertheless compels attention from start to finish. Credit a highly efficient performance from Nigel Patrick for holding together the disparate elements as his chief investigator works his way through London's many precincts. I like the way the screenplay portrays levels of racial dislike from both Whites and Blacks without getting too judgmental. Also, it looks like the exteriors were shot on location without any prettifying. Some of the neighborhoods in fact amount to about the last word in urban decay. Happily, director Deardon keeps things moving in unobtrusive fashion right down to the rather surprising finish. Anyway, the 90-some minutes amount to a topically compelling package that deserved its initial hoopla and still does.
Leofwine_draca
At first glance, SAPPHIRE seems to be your usual police procedural murder mystery thriller, with the superintendent and his supporting inspector (both played with bullish charm by Nigel Patrick and Michael Craig) investigating the discovery of a murdered girl in the local park. Indeed, their investigations initially take them down the usual alleyways as they explore the girl's social group, her relationship with a local lad, and some less-than-salubrious locations she was involved with.However, where SAPPHIRE becomes something much, much more is in its context: race relations in Britain, circa 1959. It turns out that Sapphire herself was actually of mixed race, despite looking white. The discovery of her racial origins underpins the whole story and it's up to Patrick and Craig to unpin the build up to her brutal death. This is a shocking film, exploring the ugly face of racism in its matter-of-fact hatred of blacks and their creed. There's something grippingly realistic about it which makes it all the better film.The supporting cast is very well picked. Nobody does shifty better than Paul Massie, the primary murder suspect. Earl Cameron is the model of race and refinement as the dead girl's brother. Yvonne Mitchell is superbly twitchy and Bernard Miles convincingly bigoted. Robert Adams supplies the one moment of true humour with his great cameo as Horace Big Cigar. As a film, SAPPHIRE is never less than thoroughly impressive, working well as a piece of social history as well as a fine detective story.
blanca522000
"Sapphire" is not "black" but a white woman of mixed ancestry. Claiming that a person who is physically white is really "black" is the equivalent of saying that black ancestry is super-inferior. Morally, it's no different from calling a Jew a "non-Aryan." I found the film to be racist and insulting, an ode to the myth of white racial "purity." I had the impression that the film makers were telling the audience that Sapphire and her unborn child had to die in order to prevent her from destroying alleged white racial "purity" by marrying a "pure" white guy. I also found it significant that Sapphire's "pure" white fiancé was such a weakling. The film makers seemed to be implying that the "tainted" Sapphire was too inferior to attract anyone but an "inferior" white man. The fact that the "hero" detectives are constantly denouncing Sapphire as "coloured" and proclaiming her unfit to be "white" tells you about the racism that seemed to motivate the people who produced this film.
AD
