A landmark British noir, They Made Me a Fugitive vividly depicts the paradoxes of life in postwar England. The confluence of low-key lighting and the elegant sylization of director Alberto Cavalcanti with the dominant social realist tradition transforms atmospheric details into a powerful sense of disquiet. Émigré cinematographer Otto Heller contributes some of the German Expressionist strategies later used in his work with Laurence Olivier and Michael Powell, and Trevor Howard gives one of his most soulful performances, a dark inversion of his iconic role in Brief Encounter (1945).