| Get Carter | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Mike Hodges |
| Produced by | Michael Klinger |
| Written by | Mike Hodges |
| Based on | Jack's Return Home by Ted Lewis |
| Starring | Michael Caine Ian Hendry John Osborne Britt Ekland |
| Music by | Roy Budd |
| Cinematography | Wolfgang Suschitzky |
| Editing by | John Trumper |
| Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (Turner Entertainment) |
| Release date(s) | 3 March 1971 (NYC & L.A.) 10 March 1971 (UK)[1] |
| Running time | 112 min. |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
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 in a series of unrelenting and brutal killings played out against the grim background of derelict urban housing in the city of Newcastle upon Tyne. The film was based on Ted Lewis' 1969 novel Jack's Return Home.
The film was Hodges' first as a director; he also wrote the script. The production went from novel to finished film in eight months, with location shooting in Newcastle and Gateshead lasting 40 days. It was produced by Michael Klinger and released by MGM. Get Carter was also Alun Armstrong's screen debut.
In 1999, Get Carter was ranked 16th on the BFI Top 100 British films of the 20th century; five years later, a survey of British film critics in Total Film magazine chose it as the greatest British film of all time.[2] Get Carter was remade in 2000 under the same title, with Sylvester Stallone starring as Jack Carter, while Caine appears in a supporting role. This remake was not well received by critics.
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Newcastle-born gangster Jack Carter (Michael Caine) has moved to London to work for British mob boss Gerald Fletcher (Terence Rigby). As the film opens, Jack returns to Newcastle to attend the funeral of his brother, Frank, who died in what was officially listed as a drunk driving accident. However, Jack suspects he was murdered, and sets out to uncover the truth. After setting himself up with a room in a small boarding house, Jack re-establishes links with his dead brother's daughter Doreen and some of his past associates. After Jack questions northern crime boss Cyril Kinnear (John Osborne), rival henchmen threaten Carter and warn him to leave town, but he violently drives them off. When he forces one of them to give him a name of someone who might be involved in Frank's death, he learns the name "Brumby".
Cliff Brumby (Bryan Mosley) is a local businessman with a controlling interest in local amusement arcades. After Jack accosts him, he realises that the thugs gave Brumby's name as a red herring to throw him off the trail. In Jack's absence, the rivals return and attack the boarding house landlady (Rosemarie Dunham). The following morning, Fletcher sends two strong-arm henchmen to get Jack to return to London, but Jack forces them back with his brother's double-barrel shotgun and escapes. The fact that so many people want him out of Newcastle only strengthens his suspicions.
With Fletcher's men in pursuit, Jack meets with Brumby at the Trinity Centre Multi-Storey Car Park. Brumby identifies Kinnear as Frank's killer and offers Jack £5,000 to kill him, which Jack refuses. After Jack discovers that Doreen was forced into an amateur pornographic film filmed in Kinnear's flat, he becomes enraged. (There is some indication that Doreen is actually Jack's daughter due to an illicit affair with his sister-in-law.) Jack concludes that Frank knew about the films and was killed before he could expose them. After determining that Brumby showed Frank the film to incite him to go to the police, Jack confronts him about it and throws Brumby over the side of the car park to his death.
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 kills each of his enemies with no remorse and occasional pleasure. Particularly stark is Carter's murder of Frank's "once a week" prostitute, the shapely, leather-skirted Margaret (Dorothy White), via a fatal injection of heroin. Having forced her to divest herself of her PVC outfit at gunpoint, he leaves her near-naked body on the grounds of Kinnear's mansion and then calls the police to raid the residence during a wild party. The arrests, and the fact that he posts a copy of the pornographic film to the police, will presumably destroy what is left of Kinnear's reputation.
Jack eventually pursues the last of his brother's killers, Eric Paice (Ian Hendry), along an industrial black shoreline littered with piles of coal slag. He forces him to drink a full bottle of whisky (which had similarly been forced upon Frank before he was put in the car) before beating him to death with his shotgun.
Jack had planned to move abroad to escape any revenge and to run away with his boss' woman. As Jack is about to toss his shotgun into the sea, a paid hitman (known only as "J", the initial on his signet ring), who was contacted by Kinnear the previous evening, shoots him with a sniper rifle. This character was actually first seen at the start of the film sharing the railway carriage with Jack in an otherwise unexplained coincidence. The film ends with a shot of Carter's corpse as the waves wash around him.
The 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 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 music playing in the nightclub scene is the track 30-60-90 performed by the Jack Hawkins Showband. It was available on a live LP by Jack Hawkins, which was released under two titles, "Psychedelic '70s" and later as "Everything Is Beautiful", however the track was not included on the film's official soundtrack album.
The juvenile jazz band the Pelaw Hussars also appear.
The 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, 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.
The Finnish rock band Laika & the Cosmonauts cover the film's theme on their 1995 album The Amazing Colossal Band.
BB Davis & the Red Orchidstra's [2] version of the film's title theme released in 1999 is regarded as a 'groove classic.'
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 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; 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 film 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 for American release in a less pronounced Cockney accent (not by Terence Rigby) with "won't take kindly to someone from London poking his nose in", as tape previews in the US had revealed that many Americans did not understand what "the Smoke" and "bugle" meant in this context. "Smoke" is slang for London, in reference to its reputation as a city with high pollution during the days of steam powered trains, while "bugle" is slang for nose. The line "I smell trouble, boy" is also edited out.
Hit Man, a 1972 blaxploitation film starring Bernie Casey and Pam Grier, is a scene-for-scene remake, crediting Ted Lewis in the opening titles.
Get Carter was remade in 2000 under the same title by Warner Bros. (current distributor of the 1971 version), with Sylvester Stallone starring as Jack Carter. Michael Caine appears as Cliff Brumby and Mickey Rourke plays the villain Cyrus Paice. This remake was not well received by critics.
The novel on which the film was based, Jack's Return Home, unlike the film, is not set in a clearly defined area. The film, however, is set exclusively in Newcastle and Gateshead.
The most well-known location in the film is the Trinity Centre Multi-Storey Car Park, which became iconic after its inclusion in the film. Corrupt local businessman Cliff Brumby gives Jack Carter a tour of the incomplete roof top cafe, stating that he is in the process of developing it into a restaurant. Carter later throws Brumby from the same location. The car park attracted much interest from across the world due to its inclusion, and was also admired for its 1960s Brutalist architecture. The shopping centre and car park were closed for redevelopment in early 2008, and demolished in late 2010.[3]
Dryderdale Hall, near Hamsterley, Bishop Auckland, was used as the location for Cyril Kinnear's house.[4] Other locations in Northumberland and County Durham were also used, such as Dunston. 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 featured in the film, although sea coal residues are still plentiful. The aerial ropeway conveyor, upon which Carter disposes of Eric Paice's body, has long since been demolished.
The original British quad poster (illustrated) with artwork by Arnaldo Putzu, in common with many film posters, has aspects or images that differ from the finished screen version. Historically this reflected both the lower priority given to strict accuracy over maximum visual impact, and also changes made to films after the promotional material was prepared, which was traditionally quite early on. Most strikingly in this instance Carter appears to be wearing a gaudy floral jacket. Curiously, this pattern is almost identical to the covers on the bed Britt Ekland's character is seen lying on while having phone sex with Carter. Eric does not carry a gun at any point in the film as issued (indeed, the gun shown in the poster closely resembles Carter's), and the grappling man and woman do not resemble any characters in the released version of 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 directly relates to the released cut is the depiction of Kinnear's arrest.
Promotional shots and poster artwork exist from the film showing Carter holding a pump action shotgun; in the finished film the only shotgun used by Carter is a double-barreled shotgun which Carter finds on top of his brother Frank's wardrobe. (A sawn-off pump action shotgun is used by Peter in an unauthorised attempt to kill Carter at the ferry landing.)
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