In Britain, as in most other countries, crime was a popular subject for films
from the very start. But 'gangster films', as such, scarcely figure in British
cinema until the 1940s. There were two main reasons for this. One was a feeling
that 'gangsters' were something essentially American. They had gangsters; we had
crooks. The other was the restrictive attitude of the British Board of Film
Censors, who for years refused to countenance anything approaching a realistic
depiction of homegrown criminal activities. In 1933, faced with a proposal to
adapt a play, The Blue Café, dealing with organised crime in Soho, the BBFC
responded, "The whole story centres around the dope traffic. The language and
morals are impossible. Under no circumstances could we pass a film based on this
play."
So for their first few decades, British crime movies tended to feature solo
criminals, often murderers, as in Hitchcock's The Lodger (1926) and Young and
Innocent (1937) or Anthony Asquith's A Cottage on Dartmoor (1930). Also popular
were Sherlock Holmes or Agatha Christie-style detection stories, and
melodramatic mastermind fantasies adapted from the likes of Edgar Wallace or
'Sapper' (creator of Bulldog Drummond).
The loosening of censorship restrictions, and the social upheaval consequent
on the Second World War, finally allowed British gangsters on to our screens.
(American gangsters, of course, had been there for some time; for some reason
they never seemed to alarm the BBFC so much.) Brighton Rock (1947), adapted from
Graham Greene's novel, with Richard Attenborough as teenage gang leader Pinkie,
was one of the most notable of the postwar wave. Others included the grim They
Made Me a Fugitive (1947), starring Trevor Howard as the embittered
ex-serviceman who drifts into crime; Good-Time Girl (1948), dramatising the
links between organised crime and prostitution; Noose (1948), which featured the
Maltese gangs then dominating Soho; and Hollywood blacklistee Jules Dassin's
Night and the City (1950), a rare example of full-blown British film noir with
an intense lead performance from Richard Widmark.
By 1951 the concept of a British gangster movie had become familiar enough
for Ealing to spoof it in The Lavender Hill Mob, with Alec Guinness as the
mild-mannered bank clerk heading a bunch of innocuous villains. Four years later
Guinness led another, rather more dangerous gang in the last of the great Ealing
comedies, the gothic extravaganza The Ladykillers (1955).
Serious gangster movies of any quality, though, were in short supply in the
50s, with only the heist thriller The Good Die Young (1954) a marginal contender
- though the Shakespeare-in-gangland saga Joe Macbeth (1955) rates a mention for
sheer oddity. Otherwise, gangster films were mostly confined to cut-price
supporting features with slapdash scripting, usually destined for the lower half
of double bills. Not until the very end of the decade did the bleak Hell Is a
City (1959) herald a move towards realist-tinged underworld subjects.
The League of Gentlemen (1960) can't strictly be classified as realist,
though it offered a new twist on the 'disgruntled ex-servicemen turning to
crime' theme of They Made Me a Fugitive. Joseph Losey's The Criminal (1960),
stark and uncompromising, with Stanley Baker glowering in the lead, offered more
of a pointer to the prevailing mood of the decade. Losey's film is the
best-known of a spate of tough, dark-hued gangster film released around this
time: Too Hot To Handle (1960), set in the Soho vice-racket; Offbeat (1961),
where an MI5 agent infiltrates a gang and finds the criminal life suits him;
Payroll (1961), set in Newcastle with a nod to Dassin's Rififi (Du Rififi chez
les hommes, France/W. Germany, 1955); The Frightened City (1961), where Herbert
Lom tries to weld all London's protection-racket gangs into a syndicate; and The
Small World of Sammy Lee (1961), with Anthony Newley desperately trying to raise
the money he owes the Soho mob.
By way of counterbalance, a parallel cycle of sub-Ealingesque gangster
comedies was kicked off by Too Many Crooks (1959). Others in a similar vein
followed, often starring Peter Sellers: Two Way Stretch (1960); The Wrong Arm of
the Law (1962); Crooks in Cloisters (1963). Perhaps worried about being pegged
as a comic actor, Sellers also played an exceptionally vicious gang-boss in
Never Let Go (1960).
Anything Sellers did onscreen, though, paled beside the real-life activities
of such notorious London gangs as the Krays and the Richardsons, and later in
the 60s echoes of real-life crimes were starting to show up in fictionalised
form on the big screen. Robbery (1967), a dramatised account of the 1963 Great
Train Robbery, was directed by Peter Yates, earning him an invitation to
Hollywood to direct Bullitt. The Strange Affair (1968) mixed elements of the
Richardsons' sadistic practices with the theme of police corruption, while
Villain (1971) starred Richard Burton as a gay gang-leader with more than a hint
of Ronnie Kray about him. Kray-style gangsters featured in the early scenes of
the audaciously imaginative Performance (1968, but only released in 1970).
Not until 1990 were the brothers themselves directly depicted, in The Krays.
Biker gangs are another phenomenon seen as chiefly American, but a few
home-grown examples have reached British screens. Losey's The Damned (1963)
introduced delinquent bikers into an apocalyptic SF story set in, of all places,
Weymouth, while the ton-up gangs in The Leather Boys (1963) rather more
realistically frequented North Circular cafes. Tongue-in-cheek horror movie
Psychomania (1972) had a Hell's Angels leader return as one of the undead, and
Quadrophenia (1979) recreated the clashes between mods and rockers in early 60s
Brighton.
The Italian Job (1969) played its Turin bullion robbery for comedy, with
Michael Caine directing operations on the ground ("You're only supposed to blow
the bloody doors off!") and Noël Coward as a gloriously improbable jailed
mastermind. Caine featured in far darker mode in Mike Hodges' brutal revenge
drama, Get Carter (1971), and as an icily controlling underworld boss in Mona
Lisa (1986), with Bob Hoskins as his troubled subordinate suffering divided
loyalties. Hoskins himself had already played a gang leader in the Thatcher-era
parable The Long Good Friday (1980), an old-fashioned East End villain
hopelessly outclassed by the IRA. Political analogies again weren't far to seek
in Mike Figgis's feature debut, Stormy Monday (1988), in which a rich American
villain tries to muscle his way into the Newcastle underworld.
Female directors are a rarity in the testosterone-fuelled world of gangster
movies, but Antonia Bird brought subtlety - and a subtext of left-wing
disillusionment - to the 'one last job' plot of Face (1997). But otherwise,
British gangster movies of the last fifteen years or so have been dominated by
the boys'-own cycle of mockney capers kickstarted by Guy Ritchie's Lock, Stock
and Two Smoking Barrels (1998). Others in similar vein included Ritchie's
own Snatch (2000), RocknRolla (2007) and the near-incoherent Revolver (2005);
Gangster No 1 (2000); Rancid Aluminium (2000); and Love, Honour and Obey
(2000).
Less flip and jokey were Sexy Beast (2000) featuring a performance of
riveting malevolence from Ben Kingsley; Layer Cake (2004), the directorial debut
of Ritchie's producer Matthew Vaughn, another variant on the 'one last job'
theme, with Daniel Craig as the gangster looking to get out; and a return (to
rather less effect) by Mike Hodges to Get Carter themes with the revenge drama
I'll Sleep When I'm Dead (2003). An oddball excursion into rural gangsterdom
came in Dad Savage (1998), with Patrick Stewart as an East Anglian tulip farmer
and part-time gang-boss.
Recent publicity surrounding urban youth crime and black-on-black violence
has been reflected in a number of films, including Bullet Boy (2004), with
Ashley Walters (of gangsta rap-inspired collective So Solid Crew) as the young
ex-prisoner trying to go straight. A young mixed-race gang featured in
Kidulthood (2006) and its sequel, Adulthood (2008). A promising new departure -
though picking up elements of Mona Lisa - came with London to Brighton (2006),
with a hooker and an underage girl on the run from repellent gangland types.
With the mockney-romp cycle seemingly dead, the British gangster film seems
well placed to explore fresh territory.
Philip Kemp
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