The Weapon (1956)

In one of the bombed out buildings left over from WWII in London, a young boy (Jon Whiteley, MOONFLEET) finds a gun and accidentally shoots another boy. As he goes on the run out of fear, his anxious mother (Lizabeth Scott) tries to find him. But the gun was used in a murder ten years earlier to kill a U.S. soldier, so two other people want to find the boy too. An American Army Captain (Steve Cochran) ... and the killer (George Cole). Directed by Val Guest (THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT), the premise of the film is intriguing enough to carry the film over some very rough spots. Shot in striking B&W, the cinematographer Reginald H. Wyer gives the movie the atmospheric feel of a film noir. I was most taken how the film's two lead actresses were effectively cast against type. Scott usually plays the femme fatale in noir films but here she's a warm and loving mother (I think it's the only film where she played a mother) and in the film's best performance, the affable French beauty Nicole Maurey plays a hard bitten and bruised prostitute. Not all it could have been but an industrious if minor thriller. With Herbert Marshall and Laurence Naismith.