Cinema
Get Carter
Mike Hodges · 1971
Synopsis
Jack Carter, enforcer for two brothers who run a London gang, leaves London by train for Newcastle; during the journey he reads a crime novel by Raymond Chandler. He has come to bury his brother Frank, whose death seems suspicious to him, despite the advice of his employers. On arrival, Margaret, Frank's partner, does not come to the meeting; he keeps watch over the coffin in the family home, and in the morning Doreen, Frank's daughter, arrives.
Context
The director came from current-affairs television and his cinematographer, Wolfgang Suschitzky, from documentary; passers-by in Newcastle served as extras. The producer Michael Klinger wrote to him on 27 January 1970 about the book by Ted Lewis on which the film is based; he drew the screenplay from it and was shooting in July. He refused any car chase to avoid comparison with an American film of 1968. The reception was mixed; the American critic Pauline Kael saw in it a new genre, virtuoso nastiness. The film was released on video more than twenty years later, then restored and re-released in cinemas in 1999; its author attributed this return to the fact that the country no longer saw itself as a model of probity and order.
Who it is for
One hundred and twelve minutes, in English with subtitles or in a French-language version. The industrial north is filmed in the manner of a documentary.
Prizes and reception
Ranked in 2004 first among British films by a Total Film magazine poll of critics from the country.
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