Rubbish discos, bad porn and fading dolly birds. Welcome to the 1970s. (Get Carter (DVD))

Name: hogsflesh

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Product:	Get Carter (DVD)
Date:	07.09.06 (473 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: One of the highlights of British cinema in the 70s

Disadvantages: Not many - the blurb on the back of the DVD is pretty stupid

This is a review of the Warners DVD. (There seems to be some uncertainty about whether this category is for the original - which I’m reviewing here - or the ill-fated remake – I suspect the categories may have been merged at some point.)

Get Carter was made in 1971, at the end of the 1960s, when the British film industry was about to die. It’s by far and away the best gangster movie ever made in this country, and makes those pitiful Guy Richie efforts seem utterly feeble. There are no witty one-liners, ludicrous plots twists, comedy violence or Ray Winstone. Just northern grimness and convincing brutality. The film is cold and miserable and kind of funny, and as such probably sums up Britain better than any other ever made.

Jack Carter is a gangster in London, working for more powerful gangsters. His brother has died in Newcastle, and he goes up there to find out what’s what. He suspects that local crime boss Kinnear is involved, and sets out to wreak a pretty comprehensive vengeance on all concerned. I suppose at this juncture it would be appropriate to say something like ‘Will they get Carter? Or will Carter get them?!’ So there you go.

Carter is played by Michael Caine, of course. It’s probably his best role – it might well be his most famous. Caine became a bit of a joke in the late 70s and 80s, due to his ‘do anything for the money’ attitude to acting, but he was very good in some excellent films in his 60s-early 70s heyday. The only weak point in his performance is that he’s meant to be from Newcastle originally, but Caine’s distinctive accent doesn’t sound like it’s been further north than Borough High Street. Still, he does self-possession like no one else, and can turn on the cold-eyed nastiness when he has to. He was never great at emoting, so it’s perhaps just as well he doesn’t have to do much of that, but his occasionally eruptions of violence are, perhaps not shocking exactly, but certainly impressive. He’s an odd character, too, only really happy when he’s just done something unpleasant to someone, and not seeming upset by his brother’s death so much as offended that someone should have killed him. It’s a great performance, much more than just a few famous quotes.

The rest of the cast is excellent, for the most part. The one exception is probably Britt Ekland, who plays Carter’s girlfriend back in London. Although undeniably attractive, I’ve never really liked her, not even doing her bare-arsed wall-slappy dance in The Wicker Man, and acting is certainly not her strong point. Still, she isn’t in it much – one hilarious, grotty little phone sex scene and she’s gone (‘Take yer bra off.’ Heh heh heh).

Kinnear is played by John Osborne, the famously grumpy playwright. He’s nicely sarcastic and sinister, but seems a bit louche to have risen to the top in the no-doubt cutthroat world of organised crime. Ian Hendry is also pretty good as Kinnear’s main henchman, although his accent is a bit Brian Cox, if you know what I mean. The smaller parts are generally filled by decent British character actors of the Alun Armstrong/George Sewell/Bernard Hepton mould, and they’re all just right for their parts.

It was directed by Mike Hodges, who went on to make Flash Gordon. Few directors come so close to perfection twice in their career, and his failure to produce anything else of note can be forgiven. The way the violence escalates in Get Carter is very well done, although the violence itself isn’t always convincing (I suspect that if you stabbed a stocky man a couple of times in the stomach he’d take longer than three seconds to die, for instance). The bleakness of the locations is used very well, all urban decay and poverty (presumably there were some nicer bits of Newcastle, but Hodges obviously didn’t go to them). It’s a dreary world of cheap funerals, bingo and cobbled streets. And the criminal activities of the Newcastle underworld seem to revolve around the most inept pornography you’ve ever seen. Carter, the very slightly dandified London bigshot, moves through it all with a wonderful air of total indifference, only interested in who he’s going to kill, with complete disregard for the cost to himself and others. It’s a pretty downbeat film, but never boring or depressing.

And it has great music, the famous main theme slightly mocking and at the same time rather gloomy. If I were going to throw a man off a multi-storey car park, it’s the music I’d choose to do it to. And there’s some great, tacky music in the disco scene. It’s rated 18, and there’s a fair bit of nudity and violence; I’m not sure it would rate higher than a 15 these days.

The DVD has one really nice extra – the commentary by Mike Hodges, Michael Caine and the director of photography, Wolfgang Suchitsky, is very cool. They obviously weren’t all doing the commentary together, which is a shame, but there are some good anecdotes and so forth – Caine’s less than fond memories of Ian Hendry are enlightening, and he has some nice little insights into how film acting works.

There are three ‘trailers’ (although two of them don’t seem to be trailers at all) – the American one is pretty funny, as it misjudges the tone of the film completely (‘Carter. The heated killer. The cool lover.’ Er, yes.) The ‘Michael Caine trailer’ is actually him recording a message to be shown at (I assume) the film’s premier. He seems oddly uncomfortable talking straight to camera. And the ‘Music trailer’ is footage of the composer playing the soundtrack, intercut with scenes from the opening credits sequence. There’s also a music-only option, where you can watch the film with no sound, just the incidental music. I have never seen the point of those, and this one is no exception.

The DVD won’t cost you much – amazon sells it for about £6. The picture quality could perhaps be better, but some of the graininess is no doubt intentional, and adds to the general ambience. Get Carter is a great film – don’t be put off by its adoption by insipid lad mag culture a few years back, it’s much better than that. A classic example of what British cinema could and should be.

Summary: Cheap DVD release of a great film