Get Carter

This article is about the 1971 film. For other uses, see Get Carter (disambiguation).

Get Carter
Directed by	Mike Hodges
Produced by	Michael Klinger
Written by	Mike Hodges
Based on	Jack's Return Home by Ted Lewis
Starring	Michael Caine Ian Hendry John Osborne Britt Ekland
Music by	Roy Budd
Cinematography	Wolfgang Suschitzky
Editing by	John Trumper
Distributed by	Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date(s)	3 March 1971 (NYC & L.A.) 10 March 1971 (UK)
Running time	112 mins (Theatrical release) 103 mins (West German edited version)
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Budget	$750,000

Get Carter is a 1971 British crime film directed by Mike Hodges and starring Michael Caine, Ian Hendry, Britt Ekland, John Osborne and Bryan Mosley. The screenplay was adapted by Hodges from Ted Lewis' 1969 novel Jack's Return Home. Producer Michael Klinger optioned the book and made a deal for the struggling MGM to finance and release the film, bringing in Hodges and Caine. Get Carter was Hodges' first feature film as director. The production went from novel to finished film in eight months, with location shooting in Newcastle and Gateshead lasting 40 days. Get Carter was also Alun Armstrong's screen debut. The story follows a London gangster, the titular Jack Carter played by Caine, who travels to northern England to discover more about the events surrounding the supposedly accidental death of his brother. Suspecting foul play, he investigates and interrogates, getting a feel for the city and its hardened criminal element; with vengeance on his mind the situation builds to a violent conclusion.

Initial UK critical reaction to the film was mixed, with domestic reviewers grudgingly appreciative of the film's technical excellence, but dismayed by the complex plotting, the excessive violence and amorality, in particular Carter's apparent lack of remorse at his actions. Despite this the film did good business in the UK and produced a respectable profit. US critics were generally more enthusiatic and praised the film, but it was poorly promoted in the States and languished on the drive in circuit while MGM focused its resources on producing a blaxploitation remake, Hit Man. On its release the film received no awards and did not seem like it would be well remembered. However it always maintained a cult following and endorsements from a new generation of directors such as Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie led to a gradual critical reappraisal which saw it recognised as one of the best British movies of all time in any genre. In 1999, Get Carter was ranked 16th on the BFI Top 100 British films of the 20th century; five years later, a survey of British film critics in Total Film magazine chose it as the greatest British film of all time. Get Carter was remade in 2000 under the same title, with Sylvester Stallone starring as Jack Carter, while Caine appears in a supporting role. This remake was not well received by critics in the USA and was not given a UK theatrical release.

Plot

Newcastle-born gangster Jack Carter (Michael Caine) has moved to London to work for British mob boss Gerald Fletcher (Terence Rigby). As the film opens, Jack returns to Newcastle to attend the funeral of his brother, Frank, who died in what was officially listed as a drunk driving accident. However, Jack suspects he was murdered, and sets out to uncover the truth. After setting himself up with a room in a small boarding house, Jack re-establishes links with his dead brother's daughter Doreen and some of his past associates. After Jack questions northern crime boss Cyril Kinnear (John Osborne), rival henchmen threaten Carter and warn him to leave town, but he violently drives them off. When he forces one of them to give him a name of someone who might be involved in Frank's death, he learns the name "Brumby".

Cliff Brumby (Bryan Mosley) is a local businessman with a controlling interest in local amusement arcades. After Jack accosts him, he realises that the thugs gave Brumby's name as a red herring to throw him off the trail. In Jack's absence, the rivals return and attack the boarding house landlady (Rosemarie Dunham). The following morning, Fletcher sends two strong-arm henchmen to get Jack to return to London, but Jack forces them back with his brother's double-barrel shotgun and escapes. The fact that so many people want him out of Newcastle only strengthens his suspicions.

With Fletcher's men in pursuit, Jack meets with Brumby at the Trinity Centre Multi-Storey Car Park. Brumby identifies Kinnear as Frank's killer and offers Jack £5,000 to kill him, which Jack refuses. After Jack discovers that Doreen was forced into an amateur pornographic film filmed in Kinnear's flat, he becomes enraged. (There is some indication that Doreen is actually Jack's daughter due to an illicit affair with his sister-in-law.) Jack concludes that Frank knew about the films and was killed before he could expose them. After determining that Brumby showed Frank the film to incite him to go to the police, Jack confronts him about it and throws Brumby over the side of the car park to his death.

Jack's subsequent revenge is unrelenting and brutal, played out against the grim background of Tyneside in the early 1970s, a world of smoky bars, working men's clubs and run-down urban housing. Jack kills each of his enemies with no remorse and occasional pleasure. Particularly stark is Carter's murder of Frank's "once a week" prostitute, the shapely, leather-skirted Margaret (Dorothy White), via a fatal injection of heroin. Having forced her to divest herself of her PVC outfit at gunpoint, he leaves her near-naked body on the grounds of Kinnear's mansion and then calls the police to raid the residence during a wild party. The arrests, and the fact that he posts a copy of the pornographic film to the police, will presumably destroy what is left of Kinnear's reputation.

Jack eventually pursues the last of his brother's killers, Eric Paice (Ian Hendry), along an industrial black shoreline littered with piles of coal slag. He forces him to drink a full bottle of whisky (which had similarly been forced upon Frank before he was put in the car) before beating him to death with his shotgun.

Jack had planned to move abroad to escape any revenge and to run away with his boss' woman. As Jack is about to toss his shotgun into the sea, a paid hitman (known only as "J", the initial on his signet ring), who was contacted by Kinnear the previous evening, shoots him with a sniper rifle. This character was actually first seen at the start of the film sharing the railway carriage with Jack in an otherwise unexplained coincidence. The film ends with a shot of Carter's corpse as the waves wash around him.

Production

In 1969 producer Michael Klinger devised plans for a gangster film to capitalise on public focus on the Britsh criminal underworld in the light of the Kray Twins' convictions. Klinger was invited to view a first print of Peter Walker's Man of Violence (1969) and was unimpressed, telling the director "I'm going to make a gangster film, but it's going to cost a lot more than this and it's going to be better." After searching many publishers, Klinger purchased the rights to Ted Lewis’s novel Jack's Return Home. Andrew Spicer has written that "he [Klinger] sensed its potential to imbue the British crime thriller with the realism and violence of its American counterparts" Klinger had been approached by another producer Nat Cohen to make a couple of films for MGM. In financial trouble and scaling down its English operation, MGM was in the process of closing its Elstree studios at Borehamwood. MGM agreed a reasonable but modest budget of $750,000 for the production. Klinger had seen Mike Hodges' 1969 teleplay Suspect and immediately decided he was the ideal candidate to direct his new project. In the late 1960s film censorship relaxation produced an increase in dark, uncompromising films, with many directors pushing the boundaries of acceptability. Get Carter would also capitalise on this freedom.

Writing

Klinger contacted Hodges on the 27th January, 1970 with a copy of Jack's Return Home and contracted him to direct and adapt the screenplay, paying him a flat fee of £7,000 for his services. Hodges' original working title for the film was Carter's The Name. Steve Chibnall writes: "his treatment retained the essential structure of Lewis's novel with its strong narrative drive, but introduced some minor changes to characterisation and more fundamental alterations to narratology." As Ted Lewis had not specified where his novel was set, Hodges felt free to relocate the story and decided it had to be a place he was familiar with, originally thinking of Hull but then deciding on Newcastle Upon Tyne. After he had scouted the locations, Hodges researched the local crime scene, adapting the script to make use of settings and incorporating elements of his research into the story. Hodges said he was influenced in his writing by the works of Raymond Chandler and Hollywood B-movies such as Kiss Me Deadly as they showed "how to use the crime story as an autopsy on society’s ills."

Casting

• Michael Caine as Jack Carter. Hodges wrote the screenplay with Ian Hendry in mind for Carter, but learned Michael Klinger had already signed up Caine for the role. With the backing of a major studio Klinger was keen to secure a big name for the lead, and Caine was very prominent at the time, having starred in Alfie, The Italian Job and The Ipcress File. Hodges was surprised that a star of Caine's stature would want to play such a thoroughly unlikeable person as Carter. Caine made subtle changes to Hodge's depiction of Carter in the script, cut out pleasantries and gave him a cold, hard edge, closer to Lewis's original envisioning of the character. Caine identified with Carter as a memory of his working class upbringing, and because he represented a path Caine's life might have taken under different circumstances: "Carter is the dead-end product of my own environment, my childhood, I know him well. He is the ghost of Michael Caine." Hodges described Caine as "a complete dream to work with." Caine only lost his temper once on set, during the very tense and emotional day filming the scene with Glenda in the bath, when the focus puller ruined his first take. Caine apologised immediately. In a strange conincidence, Caine's stand-in on the film was a man called Jack Carter.
• Ian Hendry as Eric Paice. Hendry had previously been cast by producer Klinger in Roman Polanski's Repulsion, and was Hodge's first choice to play Carter but by 1970 his career was rapidly declining. Hendry's alcoholism was apparent on set in Newcastle and jealousy at his contemporary Caine's success was exacerbated by his drinking. Hodges and Caine used his animosity towards Caine to their advantage to create extra tension in the scenes between Carter and Paice.
• John Osborne as Cyril Kinnear, Jack's main adversary. Famous playright Osborne was an unusual piece of casting which was suggested by Hodges' agent. The writer enjoyed the change and saw it as a way to erase the image in the public's mind of him as an angry young man Osborne had never played card games before and practised poker before the shoot to lend realism to the gambling scene. Osborne's portrayal was a contrast to the description in Lewis's novel of Kinnear as an uncultured spiv, giving him an urbane and laid-back demeanour, his delivery being so laid back and quiet that it was difficult for the sound recordist to pick up. Hodges: "The sound man comes up to me and says, “John’s too quiet.” And I said, “He’s come to me like that and that’s how I want him.” So if you watch that scene I just get closer and closer with the camera to capture that quietness. John was great, there was a lot of menace in that quietness. He made a great villain."
• Britt Ekland as Anna. Ekland was cast as the leading lady of the film, as she was a prominent sex symbol of the time and would already be familiar to US audiences through her work in The Night They Raided Minsky's and Stilletto. Therefore her small role in the film was overemphasised in the publicity. Ekland was afraid of becoming typecast, having already played two gangster's molls before Carter. She was also reluctant to the take the part as she did not want to take her clothes off. However she had financial problems at the time as a result of bad investment decisions by her accountant. Ekland later said "It was a fortunate twist of fate in the end, as it’s an unbelievably great film."
• Bryan Mosley as Cliff Brumby. MGM executives initially wanted Telly Savalas for the part of the "big man", but were impressed by Coronation Street actor Mosley's performance in fight scenes in Far From The Madding Crowd. A devout Roman Catholic, Mosley was concerned about taking the part and asked his priest for advice over the moral implications of taking part in such a violent film with depictions of criminal behaviour. He said after reading the script the priest "returned with his conclusion. I was pretty astounded when he said it was pretty good morality play! The tone of the piece, although violent, did not condone such actions, indeed even condemned them. I was relieved and at peace with the decision to go ahead"
• George Sewell as Con McCarty. Sewell was the man who introduced Barbara Windsor to Charles Kray. He grew up in working class Hoxton and had come to acting late when in 1959 he joined Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop. A well known face on British television in the 1960s, his sandblasted features and shifty, haunted looks made him ideal for playing villanous characters or hard-bitten detectives. He seemed ideally cast as a London gangster colleague of Carter's. After Carter Sewell became more known for playing policemen rather than villans.
• Tony Beckley as Peter the Dutchman. Lewis depicted Peter as a mysogynistic homosexual in his novel, but these elements were not emphasised in the film, although the character is flamboyant and "camp". Beckley had developed a specialism for playing sadistic criminals, so his part in Carter was somewhat similar to his role of Camp Freddy alongside Caine in The Italian Job.
• Glynn Edwards as Albert Swift. Like George Sewell, Edwards was also an apprentice of Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop who had come to acting in his thirties. He had previously appeared alongside Caine in Zulu and The Ipcress File. After Carter, Edwards found work as a character actor and appeared regularly in TV show Minder.
• Alun Armstrong as Keith. This was Armstrong's screen debut. The themes of Get Carter echo those of Armstrong's more well-known role twenty five years later in BBC drama Our Friends in the North, which also dealt with local government corruption. He wrote a letter to MGM when he learned they were making the film in Newcastle, and he was invited to meet director Mike Hodges, who wanted to cast local actors.
• Bernard Hepton as Thorpe. Bradford-born Hepton specialised mostly in playing priests. Hodges cast him as Kinnear's nervous messenger.
• Petra Markham as Doreen. Petra Markham was twenty-four and an experienced theatre actor when she was asked to play the role of Carter's sixteen year old niece. Her appearence in only four scenes in the film meant she could balance the film work with appearing at The Royal Court and her role in the television series Victor & Albert. She went on to play the unfortunate Rose Chapman in Eastenders.
• Geraldine Moffat as Glenda. Moffatt was an experienced actress who had trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. She attracted Hodges' attention not just for her good looks but for her work on television plays such as Stella and Doreen.
• Dorothy White as Margaret. White had a successful career as a television actress and particularly well known for Z Cars, but the part of Margaret was her first credited cinematic role (the only other being a part in the 1955 film Touch & Go.). She had previously worked with Mike Hodges on the television play Suspect.
• John Bindon as Sid Fletcher. was the son of a London cab driver who was "discovered" by Ken Loach in a pub. As a young man Rigby had been in and out of Borstal, and spent most of his adult life associating with criminals so was ideally suited to play a gangland boss, despite his young age, having intimate knowledge of that world. In the late 1970s his career suffered as he became entangled in accusations of protection racketeering in Fulham and was acquitted of murder at the Old Bailey.
• Terence Rigby as Gerald Fletcher, one of the London crime boss brothers. Rigby was another actor Hodges cast from his familiarity in television police drama.

Other Characters

Mike Hodge recruited a band of experienced character actors to play the small supporting roles. Kevin Brennan who played Harry went on to be a well known makeup and horror effects artist. Godfrey Quigley as Eddie, a work colleague of Frank Carter's. Rosemarie Dunham as Edna Garfoot. This was Dunham's (credited) film debut. Ben Aris, who plays the Architect, is better known for British situation comedies.

Carl Howard's character of the assassin, "J", is only identified by the initial on his ring, and only film role, and an appropriate mystery surrounds his real identity. His name does not appear on the credits of some prints. Mike Hodges explained that Howard was an extra on his TV film, Rumour, and the director line to say, but another extra was wrongly credited. Hodges promised he would make it up to him and cast him in Carter, but his name was missed off some of the original prints. When the film credits were printed in the Radio Times and TV Times Howard was also trimmed. Hodges said in 2002 "Carl and credits don't seem destined for each other."

The production also utilised a large number of extras, most of whom were locals who just happened to be there when filming was happening. Others were sourced from local casting company Beverley Artistes, who sent everyone registered with them for audition, one of these being Deana Wilde, who was cast as the pub singer. Several of their actors were also in background shots in the film including the casino, streets, bars and the police raid scene.

Filming

The Trinity Centre car park in Gateshead, one of the most memorable landmarks in the film, showing the roof top cafe

Locations were scouted by Hodges and Klinger in the spring of 1970, working up the east coast of England through East Riding of Yorkshire and County Durham to Tyne and Wear. Hodges said "It was important that Jack Carter came from a hard, deprived background, a place he never wanted to go back to." He initially had the idea of using Hull as the setting, as he had memories of the derelict fishing ports he had visited during his National Service in the Royal Navy's Fishery Protection Fleet. However when he returned the sites he had in mind had been redeveloped and were unsuitable as the grimy delapidated landscapes he was seeking. Moving up the East coast, the only place that had not been redeveloped was Newcastle. Hodges remembered his first sighting of Newcastle:

"The visual drama [of Newcastle] took my breath away. Seeing the great bridges crossing The Tyne, the waterfront, the terraced houses stepped up each side of the deep valley. We'd got there in time. But only just."

On of the stairwells in the Trinity Centre Multi-Storey Car Park, Gateshead in 2008. On this site Cliff Brumby meets his untimely demise at the hands of Jack Carter. This photo was taken on the last day of public access to the car park before it was demolished.

One of the first locations which attracted Hodge's attention was Trinity Centre Multi-Storey Car Park, which dominated the centre of Gateshead. "You couldn't miss it – a monumental example of Sixties British brutalist architecture." To Hodges, the car park and the cast iron bridges over the Tyne, "seemed to capture the nature of Jack Carter himself."

The car park symbolises one of the films more subtle themes, which is the destruction of an old cityscape and its rebuilding in line with modern brutalism. It was Newcastle council leader T. Dan Smith who had instigated a programme of refashioning the city as "The Brasillia of the North." Having worked on World In Action, Hodges was aware of the often corrupt workings of local government, but it was not until the year after Get Carter was released that the scale of the corruption linking Smith and architect John Poulson was revealed, Smith finally being jailed for 6 years in 1974. This has given the car park an added significance in retrospect, as metaphor for provincial civic corruption. Hodges described how wandering alone through the upper structure, he realised how the different levels could be used to reveal the hunter, Carter, and the hunted, Brumby, simultaneously but without either being aware of the other – adding to the suspense. In shooting the iconic fight scene in the stairwell in which Carter throws Brumby off the car park, Hodges used four shots, one of the pair struggling high up on the stairs, one from the lowest level of the stairwell where Caine actually threw Bryan Moseley over the side onto matresses, one shot of a dummy falling and one of the body of Brumby on top of a crushed car. Hodges could not understand his friend Rodney Gordon's constant joking insistence that the architect character was a parody of him. It was only after reading Gordon's obituaries in 2008 that Hodges realised he had designed the car park; "Until then I'd always thought the architect was Owen Luder whereas, in fact, it was his practice that took the credit. My friend, Rodney Gordon, had actually designed the Trinity Centre. He hadn't been joking after all." Affection for the car park due largely to its part in the film delayed its demolition for decades. The shopping centre and car park were finally closed for redevelopment in early 2008, and demolished in late 2010.

Hodges used another location, The High Level Bridge over the Tyne for its imposing grim industrial air and for its various levels which Carter is able to jump down and run to the waterside. Newcastle Racecourse in Gosforth Park is the site for Carter's meeting with his shifty former acquaintance Eric Paice (Hendry).

Cyril Kinnear's house, Dryderdale Hall, near Hamsterley, Bishop Auckland, provided a real-life connection with organised crime, in particular the London and Newcastle underworld connections. It was the recently vacated country house of North East fruit machine businessman Vince Landa, who had left the country in a hurry in 1969 after the murder of his right hand man Angus Sibbett in the notorious One-armed bandit murder. Michael Luvaglio and Dennis Stafford were convicted for the murder, but many believed the crime was part of a failed attempt by the Kray twins to gain control of the Newcastle underworld; a theory supported by both Luvaglio and Stafford who have consistantly denied the murder, claiming they were framed. Michael Klinger and the MGM publicity spokesman dismissed the use of the location as mere coincidence, however Hodges aware of the significance of the house and chose it deliberately. Steve Chibnall writes "It proved a perfect location, wreaking [sic] of authenticity and full of useful details such as the cowboys and indians wallpaper...the African shield and crossed spears on the wall of the crime lord's living room."The Landa case also is referenced at the start of the film with someone in the train carriage reading a paper with the headline "Gaming Wars."

Beechcroft, Broomside Lane, County Durham, location of Cliff Brumby's House awaiting demolition in 2007.

Base of the North Side coal staithes, Dunston, Tyne and Wear. Carter chases Paice along these near the films conclusion.

The Long Bar which Carter visits on arrival in Newcastle was demolished a long time ago and a bar called The Lounge has been built on the site. The Victoria and Comet pub, scene of Frank's wake is now a branch of O'Neills. The funeral was shot at West Road Cemetery and the Las Vegas Bed and Breakfast still stands as a private house. The Oxford Galleries Club, scene of the Big Beat dance night is now another night club at 49 Newbridge Street Other locations in Northumberland and County Durham were also used. For Cliff Brumby's house Hodges eventually chose Beechcroft, in Broomside Lane, Belmont, on the edge of Durham. Beechcroft stood derelict for many years and was finally demolished in December 2008, despite a campaign to preserve it as a tourist attraction.

The location of the closing scene of the film, Blackhall Beach near Hartlepool. The cable-operated bucket conveyor system has been demolished but its route up the hillside is still visible. The beach has undergone a £10 million clean-up operation.

The location for the climatic scene of Carter's pursuit of Eric was Blackhall Beach near Blackhall Colliery, six miles north of Hartlepool. The film shows the beach black with coal spoilings, dumped there by mine's conveyor system. However, since the closure of the collieries, £10 million has been spent removing the conveyor and its massive concrete tower and cleaning tons of coal waste from the now pristine beach. The aerial ropeway conveyor, upon which Carter disposes of Eric Paice's body, has long since been demolished.

Principal photography took place in the North-East from 17 July-15 September 1970. Asked to comment on what he was aiming for in the look of the film, cinematographer Wolfgang Suschitzky said "The camera work on it... it was very influenced by Mike Hodges who has a very good eye for setups and he of course conferred with his operator and myself, but he influenced all of us, and much of the good look is due to him, I confess. My main task was lighting on location, very moderately, and waiting for the right daylight and setting the exposure on the lens." On the first week of shooting in Newcastle, the ACTT called the crew out on one day strike.

Soundtrack

The music in the film was composed by Roy Budd, a jazz pianist and composer, who had previously worked on soundtracks for Soldier Blue and Flight of the Doves. The theme was played by Budd and the other members of his jazz trio, Jeff Clyne (double bass) and Chris Karan (percussion) and was recorded on a budget of £450. The soundtrack was recorded live, direct to picture. To save money Budd simultaneously played a real harpsichord, a Wurlitzer electric piano and a Grand Piano. Budd described the experience as "Uncomfortable, but it sounded pleasant." The theme tune features the sounds of Caine's train journey from London to Newcastle.

The music playing in the nightclub scene is an uptempo cover of the 1969 Willie Mitchell tune "30-60-90" performed by the Jack Hawkins Showband, who were the resident band at the Oxford Galleries nightclub. Jack Hawkins' name can be seen on the poster outside the club before Thorpe runs inside. A version of their rendition was available on a live LP by Jack Hawkins, which was released under two titles, "Psychedelic '70s" and later as "Everything Is Beautiful", however the track was not included on the film's official soundtrack album.

The theme was released on a 7" vinyl single by Pye Records in 1971 entitled simply Carter, backed with Plaything, another piece composed for the soundtrack. The record is currently much sought by collectors and sells for around £100. The soundtrack, including pieces not used in the film, was originally only available in its entirety in Japan where it was released on Odeon Records. In 1998 by the Cinephile label (a subsiduary of Castle Communications). It has often been used as incidental music for TV programmes and adverts, most with no connection to the film.

The juvenile jazz band and majorette troupe the Pelaw Hussars also appear.

Release

The original British quad poster (illustrated) with artwork by Arnaldo Putzu, in common with many film posters, has aspects or images that differ from the finished screen version. Historically this reflected both the lower priority given to strict accuracy over maximum visual impact, and also changes made to films after the promotional material was prepared, which was traditionally quite early on. Most strikingly in this instance Carter appears to be wearing a gaudy floral jacket. Curiously, this pattern is almost identical to the covers on the bed Britt Ekland's character is seen lying on while having phone sex with Carter. Eric does not carry a gun at any point in the film as issued (indeed, the gun shown in the poster closely resembles Carter's), and the grappling man and woman do not resemble any characters in the released version of the film. The only fight of this kind depicted in the finished work is between two women in the pub that Carter visits, mid way through the film. The only part of the collage that directly relates to the released cut is the depiction of Kinnear's arrest.

Promotional shots and poster artwork exist from the film showing Carter holding a pump action shotgun; in the finished film the only shotgun used by Carter is a double-barreled shotgun which Carter finds on top of his brother Frank's wardrobe. (A sawn-off pump action shotgun is used by Peter in an unauthorised attempt to kill Carter at the ferry landing.)

The film's premiere was held in Los Angeles on 3 February 1971, with a preview held in New York on 3 March that year. The film finally opened for general release across the UK on 10 March 1971 and in the USA on 18 March. A censored edited version was released in West Germany on 6 August 1971, with a running time 9 minutes shorter than the original. M.G.M. sold distribution rights to the film in the U.S.A. to United Artists, who promoted it poorly, leaving it languishing on the drive-in movie circuit. In 1974 Michael Klinger complained to president of UA Eric Pleskow about the lacklustre promotion of Carter.

The studio made changes to the film for the American market. In the opening scene of the original version Gerald Fletcher warns Carter that the Newcastle gangs "won't take kindly to someone from the Smoke poking his bugle in". This was later redubbed for American release in a less pronounced Cockney accent (not by Terence Rigby) with "won't take kindly to someone from London poking his nose in", as tape previews in the US had revealed that many Americans did not understand what "the Smoke" and "bugle" meant in this context. "Smoke" is slang for London, in reference to its reputation as a city with high pollution during the days of steam powered trains, while "bugle" is slang for nose. The line "I smell trouble, boy" is also edited out.

Home media

Warner Brothers released the film in a special edition on DVD in October 2000 in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio. Extras included three trailers; the international trailer, an introduction by Michael Caine to the people of Newcastle, and a third featuring Roy Budd playing the opening theme. Also included was commentary from Caine, Hodges and Suschitzky, constructed from separate interviews with the 3. The soundtrack was presented in 1.0 mono Dolby Digital

Reception

Critical response

Describing the initial critical response to the film, Steve Chibnall wrote "Initial critical vilification or indifference establishes the conditions in which a cult can flourish. Get Carter had to make do with ambivalence." He thought the general stance of British critics "was to admire the film's power and professionalism while condemning its amorality and excessive violence." Geoff Mayer observed that "Mainstream critics at the time were dismayed by the film's complex plotting and Carter's lack of remorse." In Sight and Sound, Tom Milne said the film was well constructed and had good characterisation, but lacked the mystery and charisma of the earlier American crime films it attempted to emulate. He found Carter's motivations were inconsistent – either being an avenging angel or an “authentic post-permissive anti-hero, revelling in the casual sadism”. In contrast Nigel Andrews found the characters clichéd archetypes of the criminal underworld, such as the “homosexual chauffeur (sic), bloated tycoon, glamorous mistress”, describing the film as “perfunctory." Richard Weaver in Films and Filming praised the realism of the film, describing it as “crime at its most blatant”, whilst George Melly writing in The Observer confessed to vicarious enjoyment of it, but admitted it was "like a bottle of neat gin swallowed before breakfast. It's intoxicating all right, but it'll do you no good."

Steve Chibnall writes that "America was rather more used to hard-boiled storytelling" and that reviewers there were "more prepared than British criticism to treat Get Carter as a serious work", Pauline Kael admiring its "calculated soullessness" and wondering if it signalled a "new genre of virtuoso viciousness." US publication Boxoffice magazine gave a cautiously approving review, describing the film as "nasty, violent and sexy all at once." They predicted that "It should please in the action market, but won't win any laurels for Caine although his portrayal of the vicious anti-hero impresses." They also thought that "Tighter editing would help considerably." Roger Ebert was less reserved in his praise, writing that "The movie has a sure touch." He noted the "proletarian detail" of the film which is "unusual in a British detective movie. Usually we get all flash and no humanity, lots of fancy camera tricks but no feel for the criminal strata of society." Of Caine's performance he wrote, "The character created by Caine is particularly interesting. He's tough and ruthless, but very quiet and charged with a terrible irony." Judith Crist in New York Magazine gave a glowing review, saying "Michael Caine is superb, suave and sexy" and describing the film as "a hard, mean and satisfying zinger of the old tough-tec school done in frank contemporary terms." Variety also praised the film saying it "not only maintains interest but conveys with rare artistry, restraint and clarity the many brutal, sordid and gamy plot turns." However, Jay Cocks writing in Time was disparaging, calling the film "a doggedly nasty piece of business" and comparing it unfavourably to Point Blank

In Michael Klinger's Guardian obituary in 1989, Derek Malcolm remembered the film as "one of the most formidable British thrillers of its time"

As of 2012 the film has a rating of 89% "Fresh" on Rotten Tomatoes review aggregator site, based on 27 reviews. It also has an audience rating of 82% from 16,096 ratings. On IMDb Get Carter's average rating is 7.6 based on 12,329 user votes. In 2003 Steve Chibnall observed a large imbalance between genders voting on the film up to April 2002, with less than 6% of votes cast (where the voter gave their gender) by women (53 out of 947). He also noticed a substantial increase in women voting on the film in the 8 months leading up to April 2002. However, although by 2012 the number of votes cast had increased tenfold, the ratio of female to male voters had not changed greatly, falling slightly from 2002, dropping to nearly 5% (526 out of 9566 voters who gave their gender were women)

Box office

According to Steve Chibnall, contrary to popular belief, Get Carter was not a financial failiure, in fact its box office takings were "very respectable." On its opening week at ABC2 cinema at Shaftesbury Avenue, London, it broke the house record, taking £8,188. It out-performed Up Pompeii which was showing in the larger ABC1. It also performed strongly when moved to the ABCs in Edgeware and Fulham Road. On its general release in the North of England, Chibnall notes it had a "very strong first week", before an unseasonal heatwave damaged cinema attendence. Chibnall writes that "Interestingly, although [the film's] downbeat and unsentimental tone is now thought to express the mood of its times, the mass cinema audience preferred Love Story (Arthur Hiller 1970), which remained the most popular film in Britiain throughout Get Carter's run."

Accolades

At the time of its release the only recognition the film received was a 1972 BAFTA Awards nomination for Ian Hendry as Best Supporting Actor. In 1999, Get Carter was ranked 16th on the BFI Top 100 British films of the 20th century; five years later, a survey of British film critics in Total Film magazine chose it as the greatest British film of all time. In 2008 the film was placed at 225 on Empire's 500 Best Movies of All Time list, which was selected by over 10,000 Empire readers, 150 film makers and 50 film critics. In October 2010 the critics from the Guardian newspaper placed the film on their list of "Greatest Films Of All Time", placing it at number 7 in the 25 greatest crime films. In the accompanying poll conducted amongst Guardian readers, it was voted 5th. In 2011 Time Out London placed the film at 32 in its 100 Best British Films list, which was selected by a panel of 150 film industry experts.

Remakes

Steve Chibnall explains that "rather than putting money into promoting and distributing a foreign gangster film, MGM preferred to reinvest in a black-cast remake." The result was Hit Man, a 1972 blaxploitation film starring Bernie Casey and Pam Grier. Though it claims to be an adaptation of Lewis's book, Chibnall writes that "George Armitage's directorial debut was based directly on Hodges' film. This is evident from numerous plot details and treatments, not least the film's ending on a rocky beach with a sniper."

Warner Bros. gained distribution rights to the original film and decided to produce a remake in 2000 under the same title, with Sylvester Stallone starring as Jack Carter. As with Hit Man, the film credited Ted Lewis's Jack's Return Home as its source, not Hodges' film, and again it contains scenes which are directly borrowed from the original, such as the opening train ride. Michael Caine appears as Cliff Brumby in what Elvis Mitchell described as "a role that will increase regard for the original", speculating that "Maybe that was his intention." Mickey Rourke plays the villain Cyrus Paice. The remake was compared unfavourably to the original by many reviewers. It was so badly received on its US release that Warner Bros. decided not to give it a UK theatrical release, anticipating the film would be savaged by British critics and fans. Elvis Mitchell in the New York Times wrote "It's so minimally plotted that not only does it lack subtext or context, but it also may be the world's first movie without even a text." Mike Hodges said in 2003 he had still not seen the remake, but was informed by a friend that it was "unspeakable." His son brought him a DVD of the film back from Hong Kong and he tried to watch it, but the system was incompatible "So we put it in the dustbin." In 2004 the film was voted the worst remake of all time by users of British DVD rental website ScreenSelect (precursor of Lovefilm).

Influence

Tom Cox writes that many British filmakers "have stolen from Hodges without matching the cold, realistic kick" of Carter. Films such as The Long Good Friday, Face and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels borrow from the Carter blueprint. Stephen Soderbergh's 1999 film The Limey is a homage to Carter and other British gangster films, and contains similar plot elements and themes of revenge and family. Soderbergh said he envisioned The Limey as "Get Carter made by Alain Resnais" Phil Daniels considers Get Carter one of the greatest British films, ranking it as one of Caine's finest performances and saying it was "A mad, violent but hugely influential British gangster film without which there would never have been a Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels."

The film's music also enjoyed its own resurgence in popularity, as it tapped into a 1990s interest in vintage film soundtracks. Portishead's Adrian Utley explained that they found the music to Get Carter inspiring as "it was done quickly and cheaply with only a few instruments, and it had to be intensely creative to disguise its limitations." The Human League album Dare contains a track covering the Get Carter theme, although it was only a version of the sparse leitmotif that opens and closes the film as opposed to the full-blooded jazz piece that accompanies the train journey. Stereolab also covers Roy Budd's theme on their album Aluminum Tunes, although they call their version "Get Carter", as opposed to its proper title, "Main Theme (Carter Takes A Train)". This Stereolab version was subsequently used as a sample in the song "Got Carter" by 76. The Finnish rock band Laika & the Cosmonauts cover the film's theme on their 1995 album The Amazing Colossal Band. BB Davis & the Red Orchidstra's [2] version of the film's title theme released in 1999 is regarded as a 'groove classic.' Jah Wobble produced a dub cover version of the theme tune in 2009. Wobble had long been a fan of the bassline of the track, saying in a 2004 interview with the Independent that "There are some bass lines that contain the whole mystery of creation within them."

Further reading

• Steven Paul Davies: Get Carter And Beyond: The Cinema Of Mike Hodges, Batsford, 2003, ISBN 0713487909
• Douglas Keesey: Neo-Noir: Contemporary Film Noir From Chinatown to The Dark Knight Kamera Books, 2010, ISBN 9781842433119
• Steve Chibnall & Robert Murphy: British Crime Cinema, Routledge, 1999, ISBN 9780415168700

Bibliography

• Steve Chibnall: Get Carter (British Film Guides #6), I.B. Taurus, 2003, ISBN 978-1860649103

External links

• GET CARTER, Screenplay by Mike Hodges, based on the novel Jack's Return Home by Ted Lewis, Revised Draft, 1971
• Get Carter at the Internet Movie Database
• Get Carter at AllRovi
• Get Carter Location Tour
• The Real Get Carter
• Jack's Return Home
• Get Carter - The Original Site
• every location from the film as it appears today, at Reel Streets