British Crime Film
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Crime Files Series General Editor: Clive Bloom Since its invention in the nineteenth century, detective fiction has never been more popular. In novels, short stories, films, radio, television and now in computer games, private detectives and psychopaths, prim poisoners and overworked cops, tommy gun gangsters and cocaine criminals are the very stuff of modern imagination, and their creators one mainstay of popular con- sciousness. Crime Files is a groundbreaking series offering scholars, students and discerning readers a comprehensive set of guides to the world of crime and detective fiction. Every aspect of crime writing, detective fiction, gangster movie, true-crime exposé, police procedural and post-colonial investigation is explored through clear and informative texts offering comprehensive cover- age and theoretical sophistication. Published titles include: Maurizio Ascari A COUNTER-HISTORY OF CRIME FICTION Supernatural, Gothic, Sensational Hans Bertens and Theo D’haen CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN CRIME FICTION Anita Biressi CRIME, FEAR AND THE LAW IN TRUE CRIME STORIES Ed Christian (editor) THE POST-COLONIAL DETECTIVE Paul Cobley THE AMERICAN THRILLER Generic Innovation and Social Change in the 1970s Michael Cook NARRATIVES OF ENCLOSURE IN DETECTIVE FICTION The Locked Room Mystery Barry Forshaw DEATH IN A COLD CLIMATE A Guide to Scandinavian Crime Fiction Barry Forshaw BRITISH CRIME FILM Subverting the Social Order Emelyne Godfrey MASCULINITY, CRIME AND SELF-DEFENCE IN VICTORIAN LITERATURE Emelyne Godfrey FEMININITY, CRIME AND SELF-DEFENCE IN VICTORIAN LITERATURE AND SOCIETY From Dagger-Fans to Suffragettes Christiana Gregoriou DEVIANCE IN CONTEMPORARY CRIME FICTION Lee Horsley THE NOIR THRILLER Merja Makinen AGATHA CHRISTIE Investigating Femininity Fran Mason AMERICAN GANGSTER CINEMA From Little Caesar to Pulp Fiction Fran Mason HOLLYWOOD’S DETECTIVES Crime Series in the 1930s and 1940s from the Whodunnit to Hard-boiled Noir Linden Peach MASQUERADE, CRIME AND FICTION Criminal Deceptions Steven Powell (editor) 100 AMERICAN CRIME WRITERS Alistair Rolls and Deborah Walker FRENCH AND AMERICAN NOIR Dark Crossings Susan Rowland FROM AGATHA CHRISTIE TO RUTH RENDELL British Women Writers in Detective and Crime Fiction Adrian Schober POSSESSED CHILD NARRATIVES IN LITERATURE AND FILM Contrary States Lucy Sussex WOMEN WRITERS AND DETECTIVES IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY CRIME FICTION The Mothers of the Mystery Genre Heather Worthington THE RISE OF THE DETECTIVE IN EARLY NINETEENTH-CENTURY POPULAR FICTION R.A. York AGATHA CHRISTIE Power and Illusion Crime Files Series Standing Order ISBN 978–0–333–71471–3 (hardback) 978–0–333–93064–9 (paperback) (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England British Crime Film Subverting the Social Order Barry Forshaw © Barry Forshaw 2012 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2012 978-0-230-30370-6 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identifi ed as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2012 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978–1–137–00503–8 paperback ISBN 978-1-137-00503-8 ISBN 978-1-137-27459-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9781137274595 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 Contents 1 A Social History of the Crime Film 1 2 The Age of Austerity: Post-War Crime Films 16 3 Class and Crime: Social Divisions 24 4 Between Left and Right: Politics and Individuals 42 5 Heritage Britain 53 6 Shame of a Nation: Juvenile Delinquents and Exploitation 63 7 The New Violence: The Loss of Innocence 72 8 Scourging the Unacceptable: Censorship Battles 84 9 Metropolitan Murder: London 97 10 The Regions 111 11 Breaking Taboos: Sex and the Crime Film 123 12 Corporate Crime: Curtains for the Maverick 135 13 Mockney Menace: The New Wave 148 14 The Age of Acquisition: New Crime 157 15 Twenty-First-Century Hybrids 167 Appendix 1: The Directors: Makers of Key Crime Films 174 Appendix 2: TV Crime 199 Appendix 3: Crime and Espionage 215 Appendix 4: Films, TV and Books 220 Index 232 v 1 A Social History of the Crime Film Is it possible to read a nation through its popular entertainment? With the growth of new critical theory, mainstream media ranging from television soap operas to comic books have been pressed into service as signifiers of the social and political ethos of individual countries, notably the USA. Needless to say, however much the illusion of verisimilitude is created by such entertainment media as film, in the final analysis the keyword remains illusion – any notions of reality are as false as those found in, say, reality TV – the careful organisation, staging and editing of events is directed towards one end: the presentation of a writer’s or director’s vision. Any truthfulness that may appear in the interstices is usually in the nature of a happy accident. To suggest, as this book will attempt to do, that Britain’s long tradition of crime cinema may offer a more nuanced, intelligent and politically informed analysis of British society from the 1920s onwards than more overtly respectable ‘heritage’ cinema is something of a hostage to fortune – but there is a great deal of evidence to support this thesis, as I will attempt to show. In many ways, the modest critical standing of much British crime cinema has afforded it a rich seam of possibilities. Genre cinema was for many years treated with critical disdain (consoli- dated by the fact that audiences – while enjoying it – regarded the field as nothing more than entertainment). But it didn’t take long for intelligent filmmakers to utilise the language of classic crime cinema (gangsters, robberies, establishment-baiting policemen) in new and ingenious ways, frequently offering up a critique of 1 2 British Crime Film society by allusion. There is an interesting parallel here with the critical standing of literary crime fiction in Britain, which was simi- larly afforded little respect until such writers as P.D. James finessed the elements of psychology and characterisation first introduced by Golden Age novelists such as Dorothy L. Sayers, with the result that crime fiction on the printed page is now frequently reviewed in the broadsheets alongside more ‘literary’ genres. To some degree, there has been a parallel breakthrough for many filmmakers deal- ing in cinematic crime, but the level of acceptance has been more fitful. One of the principal aims of this book is to demonstrate the myriad ways in which British crime cinema is as worthy of serious critical attention as more self-consciously ‘respectable’ subjects. The most straightforward-seeming of films can furnish a revealing meta-text. Throughout its long and colourful history, British crime cinema has encountered a series of problems peculiar to the genre. While the subject of the heist or ambitious robbery (in films such as Quentin Lawrence’s Cash on Demand (1961) and Peter Yates’ Robbery (1967)) has been relatively unproblematic, there are certain areas that proved to be incendiary when the films were examined by the British Board of Film Censors (the name of the organisation was changed in a piece of Orwellian rewriting to the British Board of Film Classification – appropriately, in 1984); and it is not hard to discern the reasons for the fuss. In the 1960s, the BBFC made little secret of the fact that it regarded its role as maintaining the rigid status quo of society as much as protecting the vulnerable public from sights that would cause offence or (worse still) inspire imitative behaviour. The 1961 Joseph Losey film The Damned featured scenes of gang violence in the original screenplay submitted to the Board and inspired a nannyish response. Registering unhappiness with the brutal young thugs, the Board was not persuaded by the filmmakers’ stated aim of targeting an adult audience, pointing out that the offending sections would appeal to ‘morons of a violent inclination’ – revealingly talk- ing about the sort of ‘X’-certificate film patrons the Board wanted to protect. Interestingly, this protection extended into the political dimension, perhaps influenced by director Losey’s recent pillorying by the House Un-American Activities Committee as part of its anti- communist initiatives (which had driven Losey to this country – and thereby facilitated the making of several classic British crime A Social History of the Crime Film 3 films, such as Blind Date (1959) and The Criminal (1960)).