6 minute read
GET CARTER
from The Chap Issue 112
by thechap
FILM REVIEW
GET CARTER
Robert Chilcott reviews the re-release of Michael Hodges’ 1971 British ganster classic
ALL IMAGES COURTESY WARNER BROS. PICTURES
Get Carter is 50 this year. Actually the cult British noir classic was released 51 years ago, but certain conditions put paid to celebrations last year. “You’re a big man, but you’re in bad shape” long ago entered the catchphrase cacophony of post-Cool Britannia pull quotes. Kubrick championed it upon release, it made a decent return, but critics’ views were mixed and it largely disappeared from view, until intermittent TV screenings slowly brought it back to life in the late 1980s. Scarcity value is an essential badge of honour for breeding cults. Further groomed in the 1990s by home video release, Britpop’s retro obsessions and endorsements from Tarantino, Guy Ritchie, and, inevitably, Mark Kermode, Get Carter’s status rose meteorically in the pantheon of listicles, labelled as “...the best British post-war gangster film classic ever that you must absolutely 100% see before you get a fatal disease”. Then, after such intangible plaudits, academia feeds on its carcass, and real cultists switch their attention to the less celebrated Villain, released the same year. “They’re still the same – piss-holes in the snow”.
Originally adapted by writer/director Mike Hodges, with Ian Hendry in mind for the lead, producer Michael Klinger had already signed Michael Caine as its star. Hendry suffered with
Film
ill health and alcohol problems, and remained grumpy towards Caine for stealing the part, though the tension works to the film’s advantage. Caine saw the title character as his ghost – frustrated at previous depictions of gangsters in British films as either stupid or funny, he knew from his own East End background that they were neither. Carter was a path he might have taken himself: “The dead-end product of my own environment, my childhood. I know him well.”
The Grim Reaper hovers at the film’s opening. Much of the action is shot through a long lens, a sniper’s rifle waiting to put the characters out of their misery. Carter draws the curtains while his gangland bosses, loosely based on the Kray twins, watch a spick and span slideshow of soft porn, presumably the spoils of a honey trap. “Bare ass naked and still with his socks on!” they jeer at the screen. The British have never been able to take sex, or anything else, very seriously. "Is that a python?" Carter watches on, observing them in disgust. He’s risen as far as he can go as their top enforcer and errand boy, and now wants out, so he can abscond to South America with Britt Ekland, his guvnor’s mistress. His one last job is to attend his brother’s funeral, find out who killed him and avenge his death. His bosses don’t want him to go, fearing it might be bad for business.
Its noir-ish aspirations hide in plain sight. On the train out of London, Carter reads Chandler’s Farewell My Lovely, which begins with Marlowe investigating a dead-end missing person case. Hodges stated that he saw the crime story as an autopsy on society’s ills. A man with a ring sits opposite, smoking a cigarette, the angel of death. Straight off the train, he heads for a meeting in the local pub, but the natives care little for his stiff tailored shirt and his order of a pint of bitter
Britt Ekland as Anna
in a tall glass. A decadent Londoner – his social mobility is out of line here. The original novel was set in an unnamed North Eastern town, and locations were initially considered in Grimsby, Lowestoft, and Hull (writer Ted Lewis had gone to Hull Art School for four years). Hodges was grabbed by Newcastle’s gritty urban environment. During the shooting Caine remarked, “I had never witnessed misery like this in my own country. It was like Charles Dickens meets Emily Brontë, written by Edgar Wallace”.
Ironically, for all its initial ‘grim oop north’ intent, the locations are romanticised to full effect, their dystopian beauty a wet dream for location fetishists – the Newcastle/Gateshead swing bridge and the brutalist Trinity Square Car Park are all very Ballardian. Newcastle itself would subsequently become popularised for its later exports – Auf Wiedersehen Pet, Byker Grove and Sting. A 16-year-old Jimmy Nail can allegedly be seen as an extra outside a nightclub, which was the real location for many 60s gangland murders.
John Osborne as was keen to escape his angry young man image, and here is allowed to essay a quiet, middle-aged man as Kinnear, the local mob boss (filmed in another real-life crime scene: Dryderdale Hall, linked to the One Armed Bandit Murder). His dialogue, almost whispered, jumbles up the expositional beats with the ongoing poker game and the introduction of Glenda (Geraldine Moffatt) as the femme fatale. The film favours mood over plot, and there are also many ambiguities to the backstory. The shotgun symbolises happier times growing up with his brother, present in the novel but absent from the film. Carter doesn’t eat breakfast, so he’ll never live to be an old man. His coolness is seemingly medicated by the pills he routinely pops, and a nasal spray, perhaps for an allergy to the sickness of his environment.
Conceived and produced from script to screen in ten months, shot for a mere £750,000 over 45 days, Roy Budd’s now classic score had only been afforded £450 for its budget, necessitating him playing both the harpsichord and the Wurlitzer simultaneously. It is testament to its durability that its main theme, Jack Takes The Train, has survived unscathed the saturation of a million ‘Birth of Cool’ compilation CDs and car
Michael Caine as Carter in a three-piece mohair suit by Doug Hayward
advertisements. Britt Ekland had been reluctant to by typecast as a gangster’s moll and didn’t want to take her clothes off; however, some bad investment via her accountant led to her taking the role to get out of financial problems.
Chaps of a vintage Generation X disposition will no doubt feel a rush of comfort at the sight of Bryan Mosley, aka Coronation Street’s portly Alf Roberts, as slot machine nabob Cliff Brumby, his bloody demise from the car park roof an iconic moment. A devout Roman Catholic, Mosley first consulted his priest over the moral implications about taking part in a film with depictions of violent criminal behaviour: “I was pretty astounded when he said it was a pretty good morality play!” The US producers had originally wanted Telly Savalas for Mosley’s part. The film was remade a year later as a blaxploitation film, Hit Man, with Bernie Casey and Pam Grier, then some 30 years later as a reboot with Sly Stallone as Carter and Caine as Alf Roberts.
Shortly after its release, Caine was at a discotheque and bumped into the gangster who he had based his character on. “I’ve just seen that film of yours,” the mobster said. “Load of crap. Biggest load of crap I’ve ever seen. One thing – why aren’t you married? We’re all married – why do you think we do these things? We have a family. What are you doing these things for?” Caine said he was given a bollocking, but didn’t argue. n
