PD Smith
guardian.co.uk
6 November 2012
In this scholarly but lively survey of British crime films from the 1940s to the present day, Forshaw tracks down the ways in which the genre has offered "keen insights into the society of the day". Films such as Robert Hamer's It Always Rains on Sunday (1947) present an "unvarnished picture of crime and lives lived in quiet desperation", while the more recent Kidulthood (2005) by Noel Clarke shows that "alienated, disenfranchised youth" remains as central to the genre as in the 50s. From police corruption, dealt with in David Greene's The Strange Affair (1968), to paedophilia – the subject of Cyril Frankel's Never Take Sweets from a Stranger (1960) – crime films have consistently tackled subjects that mainstream film-makers have avoided: it is, argues Forshaw, "the cinema of the unacceptable". He considers class divisions, sexual taboos, censorship, corporate crime and violence, as well as the "grimly urban" settings of many of the films, such as Newcastle in Get Carter (1971). He proves himself to be an expert guide.
Barry Forshaw talks about British Crime Film: Something to be Proud Of
Today’s
guest blogger is from crime fiction critic Barry Forshaw. A former Vice-Chair
of the Crime
Writer’s Association Barry
is a writer and journalist whose books include British Crime Writing: An
Encyclopaedia and The Rough
Guide to Crime Fiction. He is also the editor of the crime fiction
website Crime
Time.
His latest book is British Crime Film: Subverting the Social Order – a
comprehensive social history of British crime film.
The
British (or, perhaps, the English) have a problem with being proud of things
these days. It may be a legacy of the less admirable aspects of Empire, but
while other nations allow their chests to swell with patriotic pride (look at
the Scots; for instance), the English have a more ambiguous attitude when it
comes to celebrating their own achievements. The recent, much-trumpeted opening
ceremony for the Olympics featured extensive sections of rap (British, perhaps –
although it might be argued that it’s a quintessentially American phenomenon),
but the one short burst of Elgar was virtually the only acknowledgement of the
prestigious musical tradition in this country, and there wasn't even any real
faith invested in the second Elgarian Olympic moment at the closing ceremony,
interrupted within seconds of it starting by Timothy Spall's hectoring,
pantomime impersonation of Winston Churchill.
Nevertheless,
when it comes to self-deprecation – why, we’re bloody good at that. Moreover,
perhaps we have reason to be; there was much national soul-searching over the
recent decimation of Army ranks (widely felt to be a dumping on the scrapheap of
men who had dedicated their lives to the service of their country) which was
widely covered. And this strange conflict between British pride and shame had
me thinking of one thing we can be proud of: the long, impressive legacy of
crime movies made in this country. What's more, one of the most famous, The
League of Gentlemen, had as a crucial part of its narrative Army men who
felt they had been thrown on the scrapheap (and turn to crime). Topical, eh?
And writing British Crime Film, I was reminded – again and again – how
often this branch of popular cinema had its finger on the pulse of many key
notions of Britishness (and even Englishness).
In many ways, the modest
critical standing of much British crime cinema has afforded it a rich seam of
possibilities. Genre cinema was for many years treated with critical disdain
(consolidated by the fact that audiences – while enjoying it – regarded the
field as nothing more than entertainment).
From Robbery to
Get Carter
Throughout its long and
colourful history, British crime cinema has encountered a series of problems
peculiar to the genre. While the subject of the heist or ambitious robbery (in
films such as Quentin Lawrence’s Cash on Demand (1961) or Peter Yates’
version of the Great Train Robbery, Robbery (1967)) has been relatively
unproblematic, there are certain areas that proved to be incendiary when the
films were examined by the British Board of Film Censors (the name of the
organisation was changed in a piece of Orwellian rewriting to the British Board
of Film Classification – appropriately, in 1984); and it’s not hard to discern
the reasons for the fuss. In the 1960s, the BBFC made little secret of the fact
that it regarded its role as maintaining the rigid status quo of society as much
as protecting the vulnerable, biddable public from sights that would cause
offence or (worse still) inspire imitative behaviour. The 1961 Joseph Losey
film The Damned featured scenes of gang violence in the original
screenplay submitted to the Board, and inspired a strikingly nannyish response.
The earlier Brighton Rock (1947) had caused a similar fuss. As so often
in the history of British film censorship from the 1940s onwards, it is the
‘dangerous influence’ of popular cinema that was seen to be as threatening as
any graphic violence or sexuality (although the latter elements in crime films
were firmly fixed in the popular imagination as depicting more explicit erotic
activity and female nudity than more mainstream product). Ironically, though,
the most iconic of modern British gangster films, Mike Hodges’ Get Carter
(1971), casts a notably cold eye on its ruthless protagonist, however
charismatically he is played by Michael Caine. There was an ideological
distance between British filmmakers and their criminal subjects – these films
did not deal in hero-worship, despite the compelling energy of their
protagonists.
Class and
sex
Studying the British crime
film from the mid-1940s to the present offers a microcosm of the events that
shaped the nation, from the election of the post-war Labour government through
the subsequent shift from middle-class drawing-room drama to the new dominance
of northern-based realist drama. There was a changing view of class and a
freeing-up of previously rigid sexual attitudes. However, most significant was
the new, more jaundiced take on the certainties of the establishment (the
government, the legal profession or the hidebound moralism of the press). And
the often-iconoclastic impulses of the crime film could be read as a commentary
on the shifting sands of moral viewpoints.
Subversive? Perhaps.
Finally, though, this is an imposing parade of truly impressive films that we in
Britain can point to with pride. Writing British Crime Film was my
attempt to celebrate this striking legacy. A legacy that is, thankfully, alive
and kicking.
British Crime Film
by Barry
Forshaw is published by Palgrave Macmillan and is officially published on
Monday 3 September 2012.
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