Get Carter
| Get Carter | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Mike Hodges |
| Written by | Novel: Ted Lewis Screenplay: Mike Hodges |
| Produced by | Michael Klinger |
| Starring | Michael Caine Ian Hendry John Osborne Britt Ekland |
| Cinematography | Wolfgang Suschitzky |
| Edited by | John Trumper |
| Music by | Roy Budd |
| Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
Release dates | March 3, 1971 New York |
Running time | 112 min. |
| Language | English |
- For the 2000 remake with Sylvester Stallone see Get Carter (2000 film)
Get Carter is a 1971 British crime film, directed by Mike Hodges and starring Michael Caine as Jack Carter, a gangster who sets out to avenge the death of his brother.
The film was based on Ted Lewis' 1969 novel Jack's Return Home, and was Hodges' first job as director; he also wrote the film's script. The film went from novel to finished film in just eight months, with location shooting in Newcastle and Gateshead lasting just forty days. The film was produced by Michael Klinger and released by MGM. This film was also Alun Armstrong's film debut.
Plot
Jack Carter is a Newcastle-born gangster. Now based in London, he works for Gerald Fletcher (Terence Rigby), one of a pair of criminal brothers, and is having an affair with his wife Anna (Britt Ekland). As the film opens, Jack returns to Newcastle to attend the funeral of his brother, Frank. Although Frank supposedly died in a drunken car accident, Jack suspects he was murdered and methodically sets out to uncover the truth.
After arriving and setting himself up with a room in a small terraced boarding-house, Jack begins to re-establish links with his family and past associates. He meets up with his niece, the mousy Doreen (Petra Markham), attends his brother's funeral, where he meets Keith (Alun Armstrong), a workmate of his brother's, and talks threateningly with Margaret (Dorothy White), Frank's girlfriend.
Jack goes to the races to look for Albert Swift (Glynn Edwards), a local criminal acquaintance, but Swift makes a rapid retreat when he spots him, and Jack bumps into Eric Paice (Ian Hendry), another local criminal, instead. Paice is evasive about his current activities, and Jack follows him as he chauffers local criminal big-shot Cyril Kinnear (John Osborne) to his impressive country home (Dryerdale Hall). Carter forces his way into Kinnear's home, where he is met with polite courtesy from Kinnear and a general air of incomprehension. He also meets Kinnear's latest girl, the provocative Glenda (Geraldine Moffat), who tells Jack that she has met his employers, the Fletchers. However, on his return to his lodgings with Keith, he is approached by Thorpe (Bernard Hepton) and some thugs and told to leave on the next train to London. Carter beats them up and chases and grabs Thorpe. Thorpe gives him the name Brumby.
Cliff Brumby (Bryan Mosley) is a blustering businessman with a controlling interest in local arcades. Jack accosts him at his home and takes only seconds to size Brumby up as a red herring; indeed, in Jack's absence, the thugs return, attack the landlady (Rosemarie Dunham) and drag Keith away.
The following morning, Jack is surprised in bed - with his landlady - by two further villains, Con McCarty (George Sewell) and Peter 'The Dutchman' (Tony Beckley), who have been sent by Jack's boss, Gerald Fletcher, to take him back to London. Jack, stark naked, forces them out of the house with a shotgun and then escapes out the back. The fact that so many people want him out of Newcastle only strengthens his suspicions about Frank's death.
Jack tracks down Keith and finds him at his home, terribly beaten. Jack offers him scant sympathy and some money ("Here. Get yourself some karate lessons."). Keith is furious, and reveals that Jack had been having an affair with his brother's wife, thus calling Doreen's paternity into question. Jack then meets with Margaret again, on the 1849 "Iron Bridge," but is interrupted by Con and Peter, who have been tipped off by her. They chase him, but he is rescued by a drunken Glenda in her car, a Sunbeam Alpine. She takes him to Brumby in a half-built restaurant at the top of a multi-story carpark, the famous “Get Carter Car Park”. Brumby gives him Kinnear's name as Frank's killer and offers him £5,000 to kill him, but Jack brusquely refuses.
Jack accompanies Glenda to her flat (in St Cuthbert's village), where he sleeps with her, but subsequently makes a terrible discovery: an amateur pornographic film featuring Doreen, a clearly unwilling participant, together with Glenda, Margaret and Albert Swift. Glenda, unaware of Jack's connection to Doreen, confirms the film belongs to Kinnear, with Eric as Doreen's procurer.
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 derelict urban housing. Jack takes out each of his enemies with no remorse and utter brutality. For example, he phones Kinnear and blackmails him into double-crossing Eric by sending him to a clearly fatal meeting with him, but in the meantime has Kinnear arrested for murder by killing Margaret, dumping her body in water near Kinnear's home and then phoning the police. He chases the last of his brother's killers, Eric, along an ugly industrial black beach with piles of coal slag. Jack dispatches Eric in a manner similar to Frank's death - forcing whisky into him before killing him.
The shocking ending deviates from that of the book, which leaves Jack's fate uncertain. In the film, Jack bursts into laughter after Eric's death and appears finally content as he strolls along the beach. He is about to toss his gun into the sea, but before he can complete this symbolic act a paid assassin (known only as "J", the initial on his signet ring), who was contacted by Kinnear the previous evening, kills him with a sniper shot to the head. The film ends with a shot of Carter's corpse on the lonely beach, the wind providing a bitter soundtrack as the cold waves wash over him.
Cast and crew
As well as Caine, the film gave roles to
- the playwright John Osborne as gang master Cyril Kinnear,
- Ian Hendry as gangster Eric Paice,
- Bryan Mosley as businessman Cliff Brumby,
- George Sewell as gangster Con McCarty,
- Tony Beckley as gangster Peter the Dutchman,
- Glynn Edwards as gambler Albert Swift and childhood friend of Carter's,
- Terence Rigby as gang master and Carter's boss Gerald Fletcher,
- Godfrey Quigley as a work colleague of Frank Carter's,
- Alun Armstrong as Keith, another work colleague of Frank's,
- Bernard Hepton as Thorpe, a gangster,
- Petra Markham as Frank's daughter Doreen (one twist to the plot is that she may actually be Jack's biological daughter),
- Geraldine Moffat as Kinnear's moll Glenda (who is also sleeping with Brumby in exchange for the use of a penthouse flat),
- Dorothy White as Margaret, a married woman whom Frank Carter saw 'once a week',
- Rosemarie Denham as B&B owner Edna Garfoot, and
- Britt Ekland as Anna, Carter's boss Gerald Fletcher's mistress, but who is also seeing Carter and is due to run away with him to South America as soon as Carter avenges his brother's death.
Music
The distinctive music in the film was composed by Roy Budd, a jazz and "easy listening" specialist, who worked well outside his previous boundaries for this film. The much admired theme tune features the sounds of Caine's train journey from London to Newcastle. All the music was played by Budd and two other jazz musicians, Jeff Clyne (double bass) and Chris Karan (percussion). The soundtrack was first released on CD by the Cinephile label in 1998 (it had previously only been released in Japan). It has often been used as incidental music for TV programmes and adverts, most with no connection to the film.
The influential 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, Volume 2, 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.
Early criticism and cult status
Initial critical reception was poor, especially in the United Kingdom: "soulless and nastily erotic...virtuoso viciousness", "sado-masochistic fantasy", and "one would rather wash one's mouth out with soap than recommend it". The much-respected American film critic Pauline Kael, however, was a fan of the film, admiring its 'calculated soullessness'. A minor hit at the time, the film has become progressively rehabilitated via subsequent showings on television; with its harsh realism, quotable dialogue and incidental detail, it is now considered among the best British gangster films ever made. In 2004, the magazine Total Film claimed it to be the greatest British movie in any genre.
There are two slightly different versions of this film. 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 (not by Terence Rigby) for American release with 'won't take kindly to someone from London poking his nose in', as tape previews in the USA had revealed that many Americans did not understand what 'Smoke' and 'bugle' meant in this context. Also the line 'I smell trouble, boy' is edited out, for no apparent reason. DVD releases within the United Kingdom under the 'Iconic Films' label do not have this change.
Remakes
Get Carter was remade in 2000 under the same title, with Sylvester Stallone starring as Jack Carter. Michael Caine appears as Cliff Brumby and Mickey Rourke plays the villain Cyrus Paice. This remake was almost universally poorly received.
Hit Man, a 1972 blaxploitation film starring Bernie Casey and Pam Grier, is also a scene-for-scene remake, crediting Ted Lewis in the opening titles.
Memorable quotations
- Carter: A pint of bitter (snaps fingers as barman walks away) in a thin glass.
- Carter to Eric: You know, I'd almost forgotten what your eyes looked like. Still the same. Pissholes in the snow.
- Eric to Carter: So, what're you doing then? On your holidays?
Carter: No, I'm visiting relatives.
Eric: Oh, that's nice.
Carter: It would be... if they were still living. - Cyril Kinnear: You don't give a man like Jack a drink in those piddly little glasses. Give him the bloody bottle.
- Carter to Brumby: You're a big man, but you're in bad shape. With me it's a full time job. Now behave yourself.
- Carter (naked, pointing a shotgun): Out!
Con McCarty: Come on Jack, put it away. You know you're not going to use it.
Peter: The gun he means!
Locations
The novel on which the film was based, Jack's Return Home, unlike the film, is not set in Newcastle, nor, as has sometimes been suggested, is it set in Doncaster or Scunthorpe (Jack in fact makes only a connection at Doncaster railway station for an un-named steeltown). The film, however, is set exclusively in Newcastle and Gateshead. Other locations in Northumberland and County Durham were also used. The location for the ending was the beach at Blackhall Colliery, six miles north of Hartlepool. At that time (it was shot in August 1970), waste from the pit was still being tipped directly into the North Sea. Since the closure of the collieries, the beach is now somewhat cleaner than the blackened wasteland over which Carter pursues Eric, although seacoal residues are still plentiful.
Promotion
The poster (illustrated) does not represent the film accurately. Carter is never seen wearing anything as gaudy as a floral jacket, Eric does not carry a gun at any point (indeed, the gun shown in the poster closely resembles Carter's), and the grappling man and woman do not resemble any characters in 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 is in any way accurate is the depiction of Kinnear struggling in police hands.
Promotional shots exist from the film showing Carter holding a pump action shotgun, despite the fact that the only shotgun used by Carter is a double-barreled shotgun which Jack finds on top of his brother Frank's wardrobe. (A sawed-off pump action shotgun is used by Peter in an unauthorized attempt to kill Carter at the ferry landing.) The first shot (found in some books about Gangster films) shows him pointing the gun at the camera and to a person who has not seen the film would appear to be an actual still. The second (found on the back of some DVD Covers, i.e. the Australian release of the film) is more clearly a promotional shot and shows Carter posing with one arm around Anna (Britt Ekland) and the other holding the pump action shotgun by his side.
Trivia
The elderly man who glances at Carter when he orders his drink has an extra finger on his right hand, the hand in which he holds his old-fashioned beer mug.
The eventual assassin, 'J', is also present in the railway compartment occupied by Carter on his outward journey to Newcastle. He is seen reading a book as the train passes the cereal factory at Welwyn Garden City. He is seen again reading a newspaper as the train pulls into Newcastle station as Carter gets ready to alight. No link is ever drawn in the storyline, however, between these early appearances and the film's denouement.
Notorious London actor, later turned gangster and London protection racketeer John Bindon has an appearance in the intro.
External links
