If Dearden and Relph's films after the war often exploited the form of the tragic melodrama to explore masculine adjustment and responses to the changing social circumstances of the post-war world, in a small number of films they also constructed an alternative trope for exploring this central issue: narratives of men after action – seeking action. These films are sometimes marked by a tragic dimension, but the films are more substantially determined by their exploration of stories of men asserting – or reasserting – their masculinity through professional, physical action; usually in an all-male group. Masculine purpose and identity are temporarily rediscovered and reinvigorated through a reconstitution of wartime experience; and the crisis is often transgressive, most obviously in tempting the men towards crime in an attempt to rediscover excitement, regain a sense of purpose, re-establish male bonding and challenge the perceived feminisation of society after the war.