Your Police and You

No more Dixon of Dock Green: the Met faces changing times.

"Tragedy and pathos, dispute and disaster": London cops face the lot in this engrossing incident-packed picture of a police force in changing times. Commissioned by the Met to encourage the public's cooperation, it uses a sober well-crafted documentary style but barely disguises the police's frustration at the general public's declining respect for them. We're not in Dock Green anymore...

Period locations - and haircuts - are a bonus. The film's producers World Wide Pictures were one of the most prolific independent companies to specialise in making sponsored films for clients like the Met, government bodies and private companies. Their experience shows in their careful but fluent mixing of film and TV techniques, observational documentary, scripted staged scenes, actors and non-actors and occasional deft stylistic tricks. Not everything is wholly convincing but it all moves at a brisk pace, ranging across numerous areas of police work. The main impression is of a police force - and a London - in uneasy transition between yesterday's world and today's. This government film is a public record, preserved and presented by the BFI National Archive on behalf of The National Archives, home to more than 1,000 years of British history.