john k
Good movie with a great twist
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
03/30/23
Full Review
Audience Member
"Gut-wrenching" is certainly a cliché, but apropos for this half-forgotten British kitchen-sink/courtroom drama from 1962, a year seemingly overflowing with significant films from "Mondo Cane" to "Lawrence of Arabia" to "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane" to "Days of Wine and Roses," and many others.
Four boys (all played by actors actually in their mid- to late-20s at the time), self-identified "Teds," all working class and living in council houses (the equivalent of public housing towers in the U.S.) in London's tough East End, gather one evening, bored and looking for excitement, wending their across town and engaging in minor but annoying acts of hooliganism along the way, including harassment of an elderly washroom attendant (Wilfrid Bramley, best known for his role a couple of years later as Paul McCartney's "grandfather" in "A Hard Day's Night"), a bus conductor (a superb Roy Kinnear), a couple of young women in a pub, a pool hall proprietor, a young toff out on the town in his sports car with his sister-in-law, and an elderly widower in a movie line. They manage to anger everyone they encounter and still find no fun time, ending the evening frustrated and broke ("skint" to use the evocative British colloquialism) without even carfare for the ride back to their crowded impoverished homes in East London. So, almost by chance, they stumble into a horrific crime, which lands them in the Old Bailey, on trial for their lives.
The cast, including the aforementioned Bramley and Kinnear in small roles, are uniformly superb- Dudley Sutton as the cool-eyed, knife-wielding Stan, de facto leader of the group, Jess Conrad as the dandyish Brian (known as Barney), Tony Garnett as the quiet Ginger, ecstatic about attaining his union card as an apprentice carpenter, and Ronald Lacey (later renowned for mostly villainous roles, especially the notorious Gestapo man Toht who meets a particularly gruesome end in "Raiders of the Lost Ark") as the youngest, and smallest, of the group, the long-haired and clownishly impetuous Billy, who idolizes the slightly older Stan. Also excellent are Felix Aylmer as the presiding judge, Richard Todd as the prosecutor-as-avenging-angel, and Robert Morley as the chief defense counsel, exasperated by his clients' behavior and struggling for an effective strategy of defending them in the face of their own lack of cooperation.
The film takes place in and was released in 1962- an inflection year if ever there was one in post-World War II Britain. Post-war Britain from 1946 until the end of the '50s is often justly remembered as rickety, jerrybuilt place in shades of gray, black, and white- not unlike the physical terrain of George Orwell's Airstrip One (Britain) in "1984." But the youthquake and its riot of psychedelic and Day-Glo colors were on the verge of bursting forth in 1962, as baby boomers reached adolescence and those slightly older hit their twenties, The Beatles released their first records, The Rolling Stones first formed and played their earliest gigs, and Mary Quant launched mod fashion on Carnaby Street. The old generation and its ways were on the verge of being challenged by the young generation in ways that would leave British society, culture, and politics changed forever. In this milieu, the four boys of the trial- working class sods with few prospects for enrichment, but itching for something better and more exciting, even in the face of the establishment's disdain for them and their own deep flaws and problems- are emblematic of the tumult between generations just starting to emerge on both sides of the Atlantic.
Rated 4.5/5 Stars •
Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars
02/07/23
Full Review
Audience Member
A real forgotten gem, this one. Very memorable ending
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
01/13/23
Full Review
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