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The
Limey Side of Noir:
A look at Anchor Bay's British Noir Series
Adam
Jahnke - Main Page
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Hell
is a City
1959 (2002) - Hammer/Studio Canal (Anchor Bay)
Film Rating: B
Disc Ratings (Video/Audio/Extras):
A-/B/C
Specs and Features:
96 mins, NR, letterboxed widescreen (2.35:1), 16x9 enhanced,
keep case packaging, single-sided, single-layered, audio
commentary (with writer/director Val Guest and journalist Ted
Newsom), original theatrical trailer, alternate ending (with
optional commentary by Guest and Newsom), talent bios,
film-themed menu screens with sound, scene access (25 chapters),
languages: English (DD mono), subtitles: none
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The
Criminal
1960 (2002) - Studio Canal (Anchor Bay)
Film Rating: B+
Disc Ratings (Video/Audio/Extras):
A-/B/D-
Specs and Features:
92 mins, NR, letterboxed widescreen (1.66:1), 16x9 enhanced,
keep case packaging, single-sided, single-layered, original
theatrical trailer, talent bios, film-themed menu screens with
sound, scene access (23 chapters), languages: English (DD mono),
subtitles: none
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The
Frightened City
1961 (2002) - Zodiac/Studio Canal (Anchor Bay)
Film Rating: B-
Disc Ratings (Video/Audio/Extras):
A-/B/D
Specs and Features:
98 mins, NR, letterboxed widescreen (1.77:1), 16x9 enhanced,
keep case packaging, single-sided, single-layered, original
theatrical trailer, poster & still gallery, film-themed menu
screens with sound, scene access (25 chapters), languages:
English & French (DD mono), subtitles: none
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If
there's anything the good people over at Anchor Bay enjoy more
than re-releasing Evil Dead
movies, it's grouping titles together as "collections".
Directors are prime targets, with collections dedicated to
everyone from Dario Argento to Wim Wenders. When a director
won't do, an actor is just as good, as the recent Alec Guinness
and Peter Sellers collections prove. And when neither of those
fit the bill, Anchor Bay isn't above collecting genres, as with
their Spaghetti Western and Giallo collections.
Recently, the Bay released a trio of movies that, while not
officially branded together, are similar enough in tone, style,
and subject matter to comprise an unofficial collection of their
own: the Brit Noir Collection. Although it isn't often the first
thing that pops into people's minds when they think of British
cinema, the UK has a long, distinguished history with
hard-boiled crime thrillers. From Carol Reed's
The Third Man in the late
40's and John Mackenzie's The Long
Good Friday in the early 80's up to Jonathan Glazer's
Sexy Beast, British crime
movies often seem tougher and more serious than their American
counterparts. Maybe it's the guttural, barking accents of actors
like Bob Hoskins and Ben Kingsley. Maybe it's the fact that guns
aren't as commonplace as they are over here, so when a pistol
shows up in someone's hand in these movies, you know they're not
to be trifled with. Whatever it is, British crime movies
frequently become classics of the genre. And even when they
don't join the pantheon of film classics, they remain enjoyable
and unusual long after their American counterpart's shelf life
has expired.
The earliest of these movies, Hell
is a City, officially falls under the banner of
Anchor Bay's ongoing Hammer Collection (see what I mean about
AB's collection mania?). Directed by Val Guest, who earned a
place in the science fiction hall of fame with Hammer's first
two Quatermass pictures, Hell is a
City tells a simple, straightforward story about a
determined cop's pursuit of an escaped criminal. What sets it
apart is the film's sense of place and character. The titular
city is Manchester and I'm reasonably certain that the
Manchester Chamber of Commerce did not brag "As seen in
Hell is a City!" in
their 1959 tourist brochures. It might not be Hell exactly but
it's certainly a grim, isolated looking place, populated by
people living lives of quiet desperation. Shot entirely on
location, Guest makes terrific use of Manchester's sloping
rooftops and surrounding moors.
Stanley Baker, a huge star in England at the time perhaps best
known in America for his performances in The
Guns of Navarone and Zulu,
stars in Hell is a City as
Inspector Harry Martineau. Baker's dogged, single-minded pursuit
of American thief turned murderer Don Starling (John Crawford)
sets the tone for hundreds of like-minded performances from Al
Pacino in Heat to the cops
seemingly unencumbered by personal lives on TV's
Law & Order. The
glimpses we get of Martineau's home life are brief but telling.
Trapped in a marriage with a woman, whose love and affection for
him evaporated long ago, Martineau can't wait to get out on the
street and back on the job. Unlike other police dramas in which
we can never really understand why the cop is so obsessed with
cracking this one particular case, Baker shows us his rationale
in very simple terms. In Martineau's case, his job is literally
all he has.
Guest surrounds Baker with top-flight supporting actors,
including a young Donald Pleasence as the man Starling robs and
Billie Whitelaw as his unfaithful wife. Hell
is a City may not be a crime classic but it is a
consistently interesting and entertaining thriller with
unexpected bursts of realistic violence and small character
details that enrich the story.
Baker turned to the other side of the law with his performance
as Johnny Bannion in The Criminal
(also known in this country as The
Concrete Jungle). The film opens on Bannion's last
night in prison. With a few simple but chilling scenes, we
quickly see Bannion's place at the top of the prison class
system as he masterminds the retaliation against an ex-con
turned rat that's now unlucky enough to be shoved back in the
hole. Within hours of his release, Bannion is back on the job,
taking part in a racetrack heist. And not long after the job is
done, Bannion's back in police custody and returned to the very
prison he just left behind.
The Criminal is certainly
the best and most unusual of this trio of films. Director Joseph
Losey (who went on to craft the pop art psychedelia of Modesty
Blaise) is singularly uninterested in the details of the heist.
The whole robbery sequence takes place in a single long shot. We
see Bannion and his accomplices disappear into the betting
parlor and emerge a minute later, several thousand pounds
richer. Instead, The Criminal
focuses on the relationships, power struggles, and betrayals
among the convicts and underworld figures it depicts.
Understandably, it's the prison sequences that are most
compelling. The secret life of the prison is conveyed early on
as an old trustee hops from prisoner to prisoner singing, "Knick
knack, paddy whack, give a dog a bone," and whispering, "Kelly's
back, Kelly's back," to spread the news that the stoolie
has returned. Patrick Magee (A
Clockwork Orange) is downright creepy as a sadistic,
smooth-voiced guard. And Baker is again terrific, giving a
tough, controlled performance as Bannion. If you seek out just
one of these movies, it should be The
Criminal.
The last of the bunch, The
Frightened City, is the least among them, though it's
still an above average drama. Herbert Lom stars as a sinister
accountant, of all things, who organizes the warring gangs of
London into one huge, more profitable racket. At first
uncomfortable with the arrangement, the mob bosses put aside
their differences when the money starts rolling in. Sean
Connery, still a year away from his first outing as Bond, James
Bond, turns up as an Irish enforcer set up to take the fall for
a murder by Lom. As you can probably guess, Connery is not the
right guy to choose as a patsy and he's soon gunning for Lom and
his associates.
The Frightened City isn't
a bad movie. It's just kind of an uninspired one, particularly
in comparison to Hell is a City
and The Criminal. John
Lemont is more pedestrian in his direction than either Guest or
Losey and the movie really sags in the middle, just when things
ought to be heating up. Still, Lom makes for a suitably
Machiavellian villain and it's interesting to see Connery in
this early performance.
In addition to a similarity of tone and style, these three
films share several points in common in their DVD presentation.
First off, all three look about twenty times better than you
might expect. For three relatively obscure, low-budget movies
from the early 60's, the transfers positively sparkle. The black
and white cinematography is crystal clear, marked by deep, rich
shadows and effective use of light. I've seen major studio
movies from the same era that look infinitely worse than these
three on disc.
Secondly, extras are few and far between, relegated to
trailers, Anchor Bay's usual verbose talent bios, and the
occasional still gallery. Hell is a
City boasts an audio commentary by director Val
Guest, prompted by journalist and Hammer historian Ted Newsom.
It's not a bad track but Guest's memories of the film are, by
his own admission, not particularly clear. The commentary is
marked by several stretches of silence, due in part to the fact
that Guest hasn't seen the movie in decades. There are a few
interesting moments but by and large, this is not a must-listen
extra.
Finally, Anchor Bay has replaced each film's original poster
art (reproduced on the discs' inserts) with some truly hideous
covers that would never in a million years inspire me to pick up
these discs. The original posters are lurid, pulp fiction
explosions of color, guns, barely dressed dames and hyperbolic
taglines like, "The toughest film ever made!" The new
art is blurry, monochromatic and as dull as dishwater. Anchor
Bay does a great job rescuing unusual cult films from the depths
of obscurity but sometimes they really drop the ball on the
packaging, particularly on movies that don't necessarily have
built-in audiences.
Even so, the "Brit Noir
Collection" is worth looking into. If you're a
fan of movies like Stanley Kubrick's The
Killing and John Huston's The
Asphalt Jungle, it's fascinating to see noir's
influence on the British film industry. The 50's and 60's were
arguably the height of British filmmaking, with Ealing studios
cornering the market on comedies and Hammer, of course, breaking
new ground with horror and sci-fi. But film noir has always
seemed a distinctly American genre, so it's eye opening to see
another culture's take on the dark, shadowy, smoke-filled
underworld of the criminal mind.
Adam Jahnke
ajahnke@thedigitalbits.com |
Adam
Jahnke - Main Page
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