A
Critical Evaluation of Get Carter
“That a film as dark and
condemning, as crisp and clever as Get Carter should have been co‑opted
by ‘Cool Britannia’ is repellent. Get Carter is not cool, its cold but there is
power and intoxication in that coldness and it is in that that the picture
finds its own considerable power.”
In the post‑modern era of
Pulp Fiction (1994) and other stylised gangster movies, Get Carter still
retains a position of pre‑eminence in the film making communities (almost
sacrilegious in some circles) in Britain and America to the extent that the
film was re‑released in British cinemas in 1999. Its star, Michael Caine,
likewise experienced something of a revival during the 1990’s, for example, his
shoot for the cover of GQ magazine in September 1992, which made heavy
reference to the watershed role he played in Get Carter. The movie was re‑made with Sylvester
Stallone in the lead role re‑locating the action to upstate New York in
2002. Unsurprisingly, the American remake did not do very well at the box
office and it bowled over few film critics. As we shall see, the reason for
this lies predominantly in the specific location and context of the original
movie; it is bound in bonds enduringly with the North‑East of England,
its quintessential lead actor in the title role and the historical setting of
the early 70s.
Rarely has a British film been
produced that sits at such a polar opposite to mainstream Hollywood cinema than
Get Carter (Mike Hodges, 1971). From the dream‑like opening frame showing
Carter looking out from a lofty window to the opening of the credits, filmed
with a hand held camera on a rickety intercity train to one of the most
northern outreaches of civilised Western Europe (where the eventual killer of
the anti‑hero is sat in the same carriage as Carter), Get Carter exudes a
break with history, tradition and, more specifically, signals the beginning of
an entirely new genre of British gangster movie that sits at odds with its
American counterpart and portrays a realism that was hitherto unknown.
Throughout this analysis of the movie it should be borne in mind that Get
Carter represents much more than a crime caper. It is a social drama, a study
of one man’s personal moral battle and spiritual complexity; it is a thriller, a
whodunit; above all, it is a tale of family, belonging and betrayal, a potent
mixture that has been used since the Classical Era to evoke realism and induce
audience empathy and reaction, all within the context of dramas surrounding
real people in real locations. Get Carter remains encapsulated in a separate,
more soulful era of British movie making that is as divorced from films such as
Snatch (2000) as it is from mainstream Hollywood movie making.
Get Carter is based upon Ted Lewis’
novel, Jack’s Return Home about a native of the North East of England who
leaves his new base in London to investigate the mysterious death of his
brother in his home town. The film took thirty six weeks to make from the
moment that Mike Hodges acquired the rights to the novel until the final edit.
The total cost of production was three‑quarters of a million US dollars,
extremely economical, even in the context of the time period when it was shot.
The shoot itself lasted under forty days, which made it tantamount to something
of a ‘white heat’ of a film production. It was Hodges’ first feature film and
the first occasion that he had worked with a true screen star, which is highly
significant in terms of the objectivity of the director, as highlighted by
pioneering Hollywood director Gus Van Sant. “The point of any film, big or
small, is to make a good one, and then let the scope and subject dictate the
expansiveness of the audience. But a lot of the decision making depends on what
a person has done before. Opinions about art are so subjective that the only
objective orientation becomes your past product.”
The casting of Michael Caine in the
lead role was a masterstroke as he superbly characterises the chasm that
existed between the north and south of England, his quintessentially London
swagger sitting awkwardly alongside the barren pubs and bookmakers of inner
city Newcastle. From the actor’s point of view, Get Carter offered an
opportunity for Caine to shed his type‑cast skin by tackling an
altogether new part while still playing on the stereotypical Londoner image
that he had garnered for himself in films such as Alfie and The Ipcress File.
Caine himself felt that the film and the lead role was the most realistic that
he had hitherto taken on. “One of the reasons I wanted to do it was because I
had this image on the screen as a Cockney ersatz Errol Flyn. The Cockney bit
was alright, but the ersatz suggested I’m artificial and the Errol Flyn tag
misses the point. One’s appearance distracts people from one’s acting. Carter
was real.”
Almost all contemporary British
crime movies up to that point were made in London, involving Londoners, acted
by Londoners, with the capital city cast as the physical manifestation of the
social and ethnic melting pot of post war Britain. This had as much to do with
the desires of the producers to sell the film overseas as it was concerned with
the subjugation of the social majority of the population of the UK. “The
working class, from the miner to the farm labourer, are tied more closely to
the local economy and are marginalised in a commercial film intended for an
international market. Most obviously, accents have to be understandable by
audiences with no knowledge of slum life or its humour.”
Although the producers of Get
Carter were wary of the issues outlined herein, with particular reference to
accents and regionalism, the cast of the film at least contains a healthy
proportion of actors from the North East with local actors such as Bernhard
Hepton (Thorpe) and Geraldine Moffatt (Glenda) particularly discernible
throughout the movie. This meant that the final cut of the film was true to its
working class, regional roots, although Hodges admits that he had to edit the
opening scene involving Carter’s gangland bosses because the producer (Michael
Klinger) felt that the London accents were incomprehensible and the dialogue
too colloquial. It was a mistake he vowed never to make again as he felt the
edit inevitably took away much of the authenticity of the opening of the film.
Taken as a whole, however, Get
Carter is, socially speaking, a revolutionary film for its time. The
significance in this sociological shift should not be underestimated. Without
the pioneering attitude of the makers of Get Carter it is difficult to imagine
highly localised films such as Trainspotting (1997) ever being made.
Essentially, Get Carter was a successful experiment in moving British film
locations out of the social bubble of London; furthermore, its subsequent
position as a gem in the British crime drama genre underscored the value in
social and geographical diversity. It thus encouraged film makers from all
reaches of the British Isles to consider making a movie about their home town,
just as Get Carter paid a somewhat depressing homage to Newcastle‑upon‑Tyne.
Indeed, it is hard to escape the
feeling that the city of Newcastle plays as an important a part in the film as
does Michael Caine. Its foreboding, narrow Victorian streets appear to
constrict around the anti‑hero, trapping him as an unwilling prisoner,
which mirrors the game of ‘cat‑and‑mouse’ that characterises
Carter’s search for the truth behind his brother’s untimely death. As we view,
piecemeal, the degeneration of the city, we see Carter’s descent into an
increasingly violent, sadistic and corrupt way of life with a tragically
foreseeable conclusion that is prevalent even without the aid of hindsight. The
split between the vacuous ‘New Wave’ movies of the sixties and the realism of
Get Carter is thus achieved through the medium of the city of Newcastle. At
times, especially those scenes filmed in the streets and the dockside, the film
has the aura of a documentary, such is the audience’s appreciation of the
landscape and the people who inhabit it. It is all part of the manipulation of
the camera lens for purely cinematic ends.
“Cinema as a photographic medium
instantly poses its images and sounds as recorded phenomena, whose construction
occurred in another time and place. Yet though the figures, objects and places
represented are absent from the space in which the viewing takes place, they
are also (and astoundingly) present.”
However, the camera lens can only
make so much of a difference to the ultimate feel of a picture. Acting,
dialogue and plot remain the fundamental elements of film production, in
addition to the few films that are made that capture a moment in history, of
which Get Carter is a fine modern example.
Get Carter is such an important
film because of the way in which it addresses the end of one decade and the
beginning of another, incorporating a complete transformation of mood and style
that is as startling to a first time viewer today as it would have been upon
its release in 1971.
The 1960’s is a decade that has
attained quasi‑mystical status in studies of sociology and politics in
the UK and indeed throughout western civilisation. In Britain, a feeling of
intractability was fostered with the breakdown of traditional social mores
incorporating a relaxation of sexual values and, for the first time since 1945,
a real sense of a new dawn beginning. In every sense, therefore, the sixties
was the most important decade of the twentieth century, specifically in terms
of sociological change where an unbridled sense of enthusiasm was given a free
reign. Get Carter arrived like a freight train and blew away the mythology
surrounding the sixties.
The social and historical
background to the filming of Get Carter is essential and the film must be
viewed within this rigid context to be fully appreciated because the film
highlights, more than any other music or media at the time, the cold
realisation that the freedom of the sixties had gone, replaced by an altogether
more terrifying and problematic era of deteriorating urban centres and a
society in pursuit of the hedonistic goals that characterised and ultimately
blighted the previous decade. “The dour Newcastle setting establishes a sense
of distance from Swinging London, offering instead a desolate and unsettling
backdrop, from which the sense of optimism and excitement associated with the 60s
have disappeared.” Get Carter
represents the end of an epoch in British cinema and the beginning of a more
representative form of film making in the UK. “We might assume that a British
film presents Britain to itself, and possibly to a foreign audience, in terms
of its social and regional uniformity and diversity.”
Whereas the Ealing comedies in the
1950’s and the ‘New Wave’ films of the 1960’s evoked imagery pertaining to the
Victorian era, Get Carter was rooted in its own time. It was not concerned with
looking backwards. One can argue that the movie was sometimes prophetic in its
vision of the future, particularly in the scene which uses the abandoned multi‑story
car park, which can be seen as symptomatic of the urban redevelopment
programmes of the later 1970’s. Local businessman Bromby is likewise portrayed
as the property tycoon of the future; lots of money but little taste. But,
essentially, this is tantamount to over analysis. At the time of production,
the cast and crew were concerned only with making a contemporary movie in a
real setting.
Get Carter was one of the few films
of the decade to stand still and act as a semi‑factual piece of film‑making,
exacerbated by its striking cinematography. In terms of style, therefore, Get
Carter represented a complete swing in focus from the aesthetic and nostalgic
to the realistic, a shift that would have lasting consequences for the gangster
and drama genres on both sides of the Atlantic. Indeed, the term ‘realism’ is
frequently evoked in any analysis of Get Carter, particularly in reference to
the use of location and real looking actors to depict real life situations. Get
Carter was one of the first British films to portray the gangster persona in
its true light; previously the archetypical British villain was represented as
stupid, silly or funny, a parody of itself.
“Realism has been treated with
suspicion, its claim to picture things ‘the way they are’ dismissed as an
illusion fostered in the interests of ideology. Seen from this perspective, the
predominantly urban and industrial landscapes of British film realism and the
stories of the mainly working class characters that populate these landscapers
are revealed as vehicles for the expression of middle class and patriarchal
values.” This was not the case in Get Carter where the director drew upon the lead
actor’s own upbringing in Elephant and Castle where Caine was able to pick up
on the mannerisms of London’s real life gangsters.
Get Carter marks a discernible
shift in the way British film makers would henceforth treat the gangster genre.
Hodges and Caine treat the subject with respect and follow intricate details to
ensure that the final product is as true to life as possible. A scene such as
the one where the camera lingers on a seemingly endless procession of funeral
cars following Frank Carter to the crematorium is a classical portrayal of
gangster imagery. Attention is likewise paid to the detail of Carter’s dress,
his methodical, obsessively neat appearance, predominantly clad in black, reminiscent
of the quintessential American gangster movies. The scene, at the beginning of
the film, when he unpacks his suitcase, nonchalantly shaves and prepares his
firearm is a lesson in objectivity, detail and realism. The notion of family is
likewise a classical gangster genre factor, which is used in Get Carter to
great effect. Distant, cold and calculating though Jack Carter may be, it is
the ultimate truism of the film that he is back in Newcastle to protect the
honour of his family, in spite of his own painfully obvious lack of human
empathy.
It should be noted that although
Get Carter uses humour, in evidence during the scene towards the end of the
movie where Carter smirks to himself as two of his victims end up in the Tyne,
the film steers clear of the dangerous association between humour and violence
that has characterised most of the post Tarantino generation of crime film
makers. To what extent Get Carter has influenced this shift in emphasis is open
to debate. “For modern audiences, the black humour and triumphant nihilism of
Get Carter and The Long Good Friday are probably more significant than their
naturalism or moral appropriateness. In any case they have been used not as
templates but as resources to be affectionately rummaged through for inspiration
and ironic quotation. The result has been not genre purity but a diversity in
which professional crime provides a linking motif for a spectrum of films from
those that strive for unvarnished authenticity to those that cheerfully peddle
myth.”
What Get Carter does achieve (in
fitting with the film as a whole) is to inject the violence with a sense of
realism. For instance, when Carter throws Bromby’s body from the heights of the
car park, he does not land on the ground as is often the case in traditional
action movies. Instead, Hodges has Bromby crash through the roof of a car
containing a mother and her children, highlighting the symbiosis between the
world of the gangster and the audience’s comfortable existence. Essentially,
what the film makers are saying is that violence has real life consequences.
Get Carter is therefore a much more socially conscious film than any of its
modern counterparts.
The key to the success of Get
Carter is the way in which the movie immediately engages the audience and
fosters a relationship with it based upon perception, which, in the first
instance, is always the key to the bond between viewer and director. The
ultimate vision of the director lies with the viewer: an object of perception
is thus presented literally to the eye of the beholder.
One of the central ways in which
Get Carter manages to manipulate and control the attention of the audience is
via a classical detective narrative. The vacuum created by the lack of any
police involvement (beyond them acting as a gullible pawn of the anti‑hero,
for instance when he kills Margaret and sets up the crime scene so as to
incriminate an entire house‑full of debauched party‑goers) is
filled by the viewer. We are taken, step by step, through the narrative. Because
Carter never discloses his private thoughts to any of the characters and
because Hodges decided not to use the American methodology of asides, the
audience is left to form its own conclusion about the core theme of Frank’s
murder, in the same ad hoc way in which a detective would try to solve the
case. When Jack makes a discovery, so do we. We thus evolve emotionally with
the lead character.
“The detective film justifies its
gaps and retardations by controlling knowledge, self‑consciousness and
communicativeness. The genre aims to create curiosity about past story events
(e.g. who killed whom), suspense about upcoming events, and surprise with
respect to unexpected disclosures about the story.”
Director Mike Hodges keeps the
audience in the dark for as long as he feels necessary. Human curiosity is the
determining factor behind audience participation and it is a fact not lost on
the director. He refrains from hinting at the reason behind Jack’s brother’s
murder until three‑quarters of the way through the duration of the film.
Hitherto, all that the viewer is certain of is that there was serious foul play
involved and that Jack’s brother was not, like Jack, a career criminal. It is
therefore made implicit that his death contains a more sinister motive than if
he had also been a gangster. Certainly, the plot relies on the civilian, hard‑working,
proletarian nature of the initial victim for reasons of empathy.
Suddenly, in a riveting scene
involving Jack and Glenda the director introduces an intriguing notion, far
more menacing than any of us had ever imagined. After sex with Glenda, the
camera fixes on a semi‑naked Caine, smoking a cigarette, and watching a
poor quality pornography film shot on a hand held camera and projected across
the windowless bedroom onto the white wall ahead of the bed. Hodges cleverly
set the scene up with the wall to the back of Carter acting as a mirror whereby
we see the movie in real time with Jack. When he notices his niece in the
picture so do we, although, like him, we have to watch for a couple of minutes
longer to be sure it really is Doreen.
At first he appears transfixed by
the movie. Given Jack’s personal history that we have already lived through to
that point, we are aware that pornography is well within the bounds of his
interest and fear nothing of any narrative significance can come from this post‑coital
scene. Yet, all of a sudden, we notice a crack appear on his stoic, focused
face. Quite unbelievably, we see him shed tears, his piercing, cold blue eyes
filled with emotion for the first time in the film, even including his own
brother’s funeral, which he participated in as if he were a statue.
Still, though, we are unsure of the
trigger for his melancholy. Only when Jack storms up to the bathroom, where
Glenda is naked and submerged in water, demanding to know who the young
schoolgirl in the movie is (we can clearly see Glenda as one of the other
actresses in the projector film), do we begin to piece together the
unthinkable. Pornography was not the multi‑million dollar industry that
it is today and the audience would have found the realisation of Doreen’s
plight a truly shocking revelation.
It would be no exaggeration to
describe this particular scene as the crux of the entire film. Certainly, Mike
Hodges thought as much. In the commentary to the digitally enhanced re‑release
of the movie he explains how shooting the scene between Jack and Glenda was the
most taught he had ever presided over; how Michael Caine psyched himself up for
the scene so much that he lost control of his composure off camera. The scene
reveals to the viewer the plot of the film, a necessarily pedantic moment
before the action goes into over‑drive. “What did he (Caine) give me? He
gave me the film in many ways. If he hadn’t made this scene work it would have
been a horrible film.”
It is true that viewer must feel the rage and underlying sadness of Jack Carter
to have any engagement in the conclusion to the film. The audience must know
the exact, simple reason behind Carter’s ensuing orgy of revenge‑fuelled
violence. Caine makes it clear while holding the actress by the scruff of her
sopping wet neck.
Carter to Glenda: “You didn’t know
her last name?”
Glenda to Carter: “No.”
Carter to Glenda: “It’s Carter.
That’s my name. And her father is my brother and he was murdered last Sunday.”
From this juncture on, the central
character and plot of the movie accelerate their descent towards the
intractable, inevitable conclusion.
At this point it is important to
critically evaluate the central character of Jack Carter so as to define where
exactly the film’s ultimate power resides. As we have already discussed, the
audience establishes an early link with Carter and he is in almost every single
shot of the final edit; Carter literally dominates the movie. We follow him on
his quest for the perpetrators to his brother’s murder, involving a sub‑text
of colourful underworld characters like Eric (Ian Hendry) and Con (George
Sewell). We are struck by his callous and distant persona and his sarcastic nature,
superbly evidenced in the second scene involving Jack and his niece, outside of
a late night city centre diner.
Carter to Doreen: “How’s school?”
Doreen: “I left last year.”
Carter: “What are you doing now?”
Doreen: “Working in Woolworth’s.”
Carter: “That must be very
interesting.”
That he is eccentric is likewise
understood, typified when he walks stark naked down the street with a twelve
bore shotgun outside of the house he is staying in. Furthermore, it is
signalled that Jack is held in high esteem by his gangster associates and is
clearly in possession of a coveted reputation as a tough man, underscored when
the remarkably camp crime kingpin Kinnear (John Osborne) says to his mistress,
“you don’t offer a man like Jack a drink in a piddly little glass like that;
give him the bloody bottle.” It is all part of the building blocks that piece
together to give us a wonderfully mosaic character, full of complexity and
contradiction, including details such as Carter’s incessant pill‑taking
and the curious nasal drops that he administers on his initial train ride
north.
Hodges is right in pointing out
that, had Michael Caine not been cast in the lead role with his inherent
charisma and brilliantly subtle acting techniques, the film would have remained
anchored in its ultimately negative depiction of humanity. Instead, Caine plays
Jack Carter with an underlying degree of humanity, a small fragment of morality
left within an otherwise deserted soul. What this means is that the audience is
aware that Carter is aware that his is sick. We can see it when he is following
Margaret through the winding, dark streets of Newcastle and in a more poignant
scene towards the end of the film where Carter is sat on a ferry: in idolising
the young family sat next to him we are made aware that this is a life that
Carter can never lead, though we are left with the feeling that he wished he
could have turned out in that socially acceptable way.
It is impossible to understate the
significance of Caine’s subtle performance. The power of his acting is so
strong that it even misleads us into believing that Get Carter is an
essentially violent film. It is not. The scene, for instance, where Carter
stabs Con at the back of the bookmakers, is non gratuitous. All of the anger,
the menace and the rage of the scene are contained in Caine’s contorted face.
It is in his features that we see an image of hell; the actual violence, in
real terms, is minimal, especially by contemporary standards. It was also
something of a risk for Michael Caine to take the role of Jack Carter in 1971,
when he had only just begin to establish himself as a leading actor. Plenty of
actors would have shied away from a script that demanded the lead character be
mean, dispirited and violent; more still would have disliked the fact that
Carter has to die in the end, a stumbling block for many leading Hollywood
actors. It is not surprising that many fans believe Get Carter to be Michael
Caine’s finest hour.
Get Carter is an important film in
the study of the portrayal of women in Britain. It is immediately noticeable
that all of the women in Get Carter are troubled, unstable and disempowered.
Mirroring the paradox of Carter’s London swagger in the heart of industrial
Newcastle, the treatment of women in Get Carter can be seen as a commentary on
the anxieties of the time, especially concerning the consequences of the
culture of permissive, promiscuous sexuality that had characterised the
previous decade where films painted a distinctly different view of femininity
and female sexuality.
“The narrative of these films (of
the 60s) heralded a new feminine perspective marked by the importance of sexual
expression to self identity; the centrality of individualised forms of glamour
to a more female orientated public life, and London’s structural role in
enabling and authorising this glamour and agency. Like the beauty and fashion
spreads in women’s magazines, this glamour has a feminine address,
foregrounding its role in the creation of a new and powerful self.”
It is as if Hodges (himself from
the South East of England) was determined to shatter the myths of British life
with his first feature film. Outside of Swinging London, he seems to state
existed a world where women have not yet achieved anything approaching parity with
their male counterparts. Consider the characters. Glenda is a kept woman,
pretty and voluptuous, yet she is weak and corruptible. Doreen (Petra Markham)
has been taken advantage of and seems to have no future outside of her mundane
job at Woolworth’s. Margaret (Dorothy White) is reviled as a scheming
opportunist, but again she lacks power within her community and is at the mercy
of the strong, villainous men around her.
Even the landlady Edna (Rosemarie Dunham) with her own property and
steady income is depicted as weak willed and corruptible. Despite her instincts
about Carter she is still ultimately submissive and shares her bed with the
gangster. The movie’s only female star, Britt Ekland, who plays Anna, is at the
centre of a dangerous love triangle involving Carter and his boss; two scenes
showing her mutilated face after her sexual indiscretions come to light were
cut out of the final edit, much to the actresses’ chagrin.
All classic movies rely to some
degree upon the musical score prepared for production. In Get Carter’s case,
Roy Budd opted for a simple, almost child‑like central theme that rested
on a few melancholic notes on a keyboard. Hodges cleverly introduces this score
first at the beginning of the film, again in the middle when Carter disposes of
Glenda’s body locked in the boot of her car, and finally at the final scene on
the beach. In this sense, the music in Get Carter is used in an operatic
manner, serving as book ends by which the viewer can chart their progress
through the movie. Hodges likewise uses the haunting sound of a chilling wind
at the same intervals, again to act as a pointer to important sections in the
film.
The conclusion to the film remains
truly shocking today. It was certainly unconventional in its time, but in light
of the use of pornography and handguns in British crime (both rarities in
1971), the audience could view the end of the film in its true context. Once
Carter has wreaked his revenge on all of the characters involved in Doreen’s
sexual humiliation, he sets his sights on his nemesis, Eric. By this point, the
villain has become the hero. In a distorted take on the knight in shining
armour tale, Carter is exacting his terrible revenge for the sake of his
niece’s honour. There is no mileage for him in the destruction of so many
people upon whom he depends for a livelihood. As we are constantly reminded,
Jack aims to flee to South America with Anna, which makes his insistence upon
revenge all the more perplexing and perversely heroic.
After killing Eric by mimicking the
way in which he disposed of Frank, Carter’s inherent madness comes rushing to
the surface; his face cracks and he lets out a menacing cackle as Eric’s body
is mechanically deposited into the sea. We are only surprised that he has not cracked
sooner.
Justice is finally and ultimately
served in the movie’s final scene. Aiming to throw his shotgun into the sea the
sniper who is sat with Carter in the train carriage at the beginning of the
film shoots him down. We are left unaware as to whether Carter had just retired
from life as a hit man. Carter is left spread‑eagled on the dirty sand of
the Newcastle beach, the waves crashing against his lifeless body. In terms of
iconographic impact, this final scene packs a considerable punch; a fitting
conclusion to a masterful portrayal of real life within the bounds of a
revitalised traditional genre.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
J. Ashby
& A. Higson (Edtd.), British Cinema: Past and Present (Routledge;
London & New York, 2001)
Magazines
C.
Upcher, The Mark of Caine, in, GQ Magazine (September, 1992)
Films
Get Carter (M. Hodges; MGM
Films, 1971)
