Space, Gender & Hierarchy in British Gangland Film
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BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE: Space, Gender & Hierarchy in British Gangland Film Sally Tatham Robertson Williams Submitted to the University of Hertfordshire in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of PhD October 2010 Acknowledgements Firstly, I‟d like to thank Alan Brooke for his unfailing enthusiasm, encouragement and inspiration throughout an unexpected academic journey, which he initiated over a decade ago: following my enquiry regarding a weekly evening class in the History of Art, he persuaded me instead to embark upon a full-time BA (Hons) in Cultural Studies, subsequently employing me as lecturer and tutor on the course team and beyond! Thanks also to Dr Penny Lane, who insisted I should „consider‟ a PhD (and subsequently refused to take no for an answer); to Jenny Bloodworth, for her friendship when I needed it most; and to my supervisors, Professor Tony Shaw and Dr Steven Peacock, without whom this thesis would not have seen the light of day. Most of all, however, I am of course indebted to my family for their enduring patience, love and support: it goes without saying that I wouldn‟t have achieved any of this without you. i Abstract A principal aim of this research has been to establish the capacity of British Gangland film to articulate its era of production through the cinematic interpretation of contemporary concerns and anxieties in narratives relating to the criminal underworld. In order to do so, the study has concentrated on the analysis of space, gender and hierarchy within representative generic texts produced between 1945 and the present. The thesis is divided into three sections: the first offers a general overview of British Gangland film from the 65 years under discussion with the aim of identifying recurring generic patterns and motifs. The second and third sections are more specifically focused, their chapters examining the narrative significance and development of the male and the female protagonist respectively. Within the films under discussion, the relationship between these protagonists and their environment represents a fundamental generic component, resulting in an emphasis on space and place. Space within these narratives is inherently territorial, and thus irrevocably bound up with hierarchies of power. The predominantly urban locations in which the narratives are set represent a twilight world, a demi-monde, which is rarely neutral but dominated by the patriarchal order structuring the notion of „Gangland‟. Such spaces are therefore inextricably linked with gender, hierarchy, and dynamic power relations. Whilst it would have been possible to explore each of these areas in isolation through specifically relevant theoretical perspectives, their interdependence is central to this study. Consequently, a holistic theoretical approach has facilitated analysis of the symbiotic relationship between the three key elements of space, gender and hierarchy and the processes involved in the generation of meaning: this has resulted in a reading of British Gangland film as cultural artefact, reflecting its circumstances of production. ii Preface In general, referencing has been derived from the MHRA Style Guide; this includes footnotes relating to specific sources together with a comprehensive bibliography.1 The notable exception to this referencing system is the films themselves: within the body of the text, the first reference to a film title is followed by its year of production in parentheses; in subsequent references the title stands alone. Rather than appending full production details as footnotes, these are incorporated within two filmographies at the end of the thesis - one alphabetical, the other chronological. As noted in Chapter One, a number of commentators have identified similarities between the genre under discussion and the Western, a significant constituent factor in both being the specific space and place in which the narratives are played out. This invocation of an identifiable generic „world‟ which exists both in reality and in the imagination has contributed to the convention of using a capital initial when writing on the Western: as the cultural and spatial setting of the narratives discussed here can be read as equally evocative, a similar form has been used when referring to the heterotopian world of Gangland. 1 Glanville Price & MHRA Sub-Committee (eds.), MHRA Style Guide, (London: Modern Humanities Research Association, 2002) Table of Contents Abstract i Preface ii Introduction 1 Chapter One: A Theoretical Overview 14 Chapter Two: Mapping the Underworld through British Gangland Film 31 Part I: 1945 – 1970 Chapter Three: Mapping the Underworld through British Gangland Film 54 Part II: 1971 to the Present Chapter Four: The Spiv & the City: Spieling his way through the Urban Landscape 74 Chapter Five: From Brighton Rock to Northern Grit: Excursions from the Metropolis 97 Chapter Six: From Back Streets to Penthouse Suites: The Domain of the Good-Time Girl 118 Chapter Seven: „A Woman‟s Place‟: Charting her Progress through the Demi-Monde 142 Conclusion 167 Bibliography 176 Filmographies 183 Introduction Introduction 2 Film historian Robert Murphy believes that „apart from a brief upsurge between 1942 and 1947, British cinema has been disparaged and despised for almost all its existence‟.1 Whether or not one agrees with Murphy‟s contention, it is interesting to note that the genre of British Gangland film began to take shape during this period, and that one of its seminal texts, the Boulting Brothers‟ Brighton Rock, was released as this golden age drew to a close in 1947. Consequently, one aim of this thesis is to demonstrate that far from representing a grand finale to the „upsurge‟ identified by Murphy, Brighton Rock was one of a number of texts which heralded the arrival of an enduring and responsive British genre with the capacity to interpret the historical circumstances in which its films have been produced. This thesis therefore examines a range of representative texts from the genre produced between 1945 and the present. Recurring themes and motifs are identified through extensive textual analysis with the aim of establishing a generic capacity to articulate prevailing social, cultural and moral concerns. Whilst the original intention was to focus exclusively on a reading of space and place within these narratives, it quickly became apparent that it would be more productive to situate such spatial analysis within the context of its generic relationship with gender and hierarchical power. Further, the generic interdependence of these three elements is presented here as fundamental to the generation of meaning, with identifiable variations and developments in their portrayal over the decades contributing to the interpretation of these texts as cultural artefacts. Consequently, the films included in the following chapters were chosen according to their capacity to evidence three principal features: the dynamic relationship between space, gender and hierarchy; the contribution of iconography and mise-en-scène to generically conventional tropes; and the socio-historical circumstances within which an individual text was produced. As will become apparent, these criteria were considered of greater relevance to the thesis than the critical reception of individual films. A particularly salient example is Douglas Hickox‟s Brannigan (1975), starring John Wayne as the eponymous Chicago police detective in pursuit of a Mafioso on the run in London. In addition to being panned by the critics, Brannigan did not fare well at the box office. Nonetheless, as discussed in Chapter Three, the film complies with the three specified criteria to such an extent that it becomes almost parodic, thereby exemplifying the significance of generic convention (and its chronological development) to a comprehensive reading of these narratives. This particular example is also indicative of the diversity of British Gangland film, and the way in which established codes and conventions are fundamental to 1 Robert Murphy (ed.), The British Cinema Book, 2nd edn. (London: BFI Publishing, 2001), p.xi. Introduction 3 generic cohesion and identity. It is a premise borne out by the eclectic nature of the films included here: iconic benchmarks such as Brighton Rock (1947) and Performance (1970) appear alongside little-known B-movies and low-budget projects such as Beat Girl (1959) and London to Brighton (2006), as well as „star vehicles‟ such as Brannigan, above. As noted, in each case it was therefore the clarity with which the generic interpretation of space, gender and hierarchy was portrayed which merited a film‟s inclusion. This allowed assessment of similarities and differences across a broad range of texts produced over the past 65 years, analysis of such diverse examples confirming the value of this methodology. In addition, individual films were selected according to their relevance to specific themes: for instance, narratives such as Good Time Girl (1948) and The Long Good Friday (1980) were included in order to demonstrate developments in the generic portrayal of „a woman‟s place‟ over the decades. Inevitably, the final selection of films was whittled down from a much greater number of generic texts, the majority of which were originally identified through primary and secondary sources. These included contemporary reviews and articles in trade publications, newspapers and magazines, together with more recent edited volumes, monographs and journal articles. Most of the films were available