Robbery - 1967 film review

I watched Robbery in the cinema as a boy, not too long after its original release, and I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed it all over again in 2009 and recorded my enthusiasm on this blog. Watching for a third time, I remain impressed. Peter Yates, the director, is much better known for films such as Bullitt, famous for its car chase in San Francisco, but the car chase in central London at the start of Robbery is itself excellent, and it paves the way for an entertaining fictionalisation of the real life Great Train Robbery.

The casting is clever, because to some extent it confounds expectations. The gang leader, Paul Clifton, is played by Stanley Baker, who made his name as a tough cop. Other actors to play gang members include Barry Foster (famed as Van der Valk), George Sewell (of Special Branch) and the charismatic Frank Finlay . Conversely, the lead cop is James Booth, who you might think of as more likely to play a crafty villain. His boss, Glynn Edwards, was equally adept at playing baddies. So perhaps we're more inclined to hope, secretly, that the heist will succeed.

The soundtrack was written by Johnny Keating, who indulges in a Bacharachesque theme for a climactic scene at the gang's hideout, while the screenplay was co-written by Edward Boyd, an interesting writer who collaborated with Bill Knox on the novelisation of Boyd's TV series The View from Daniel Pike (Bill's widow told me that he did all the writing, based on Boyd's ideas). 

Heist films tend to be predictable, but this one is genuinely gripping, perhaps because the case on which it was based was so remarkable. Credit for this goes to Yates, who does a great job, along with the wonderful cast (which also includes Joanna Pettett, whose career ended far too soon).  Definitely recommended. 

 

Forgotten Book - The Chief Inspector's Statement

Maurice Procter put his experience as a policeman in Yorkshire to excellent use in a series of crime novels. His best-known book is Hell is a City, which introduced the tough but decent cop Harry Martineau, portrayed by Stanley Baker when the novel was filmed. The Chief Inspector's Statement, which predated that book, came out in 1951, and introduced another strong character, DCI Hunter of Scotland Yard. It's not a well-remembered title these days, but it's a good example of Procter's craftsmanship.

The setting is the fictitious Yorkshire village of Pennycross, and the alternative title of the story is  The Pennycross Murders. Hunter is summoned back there when a child is murdered, the second such crime in the space of a few months. His investigation of the first killing drew a blank, although he found himself attracted to the victim's older sister, Barbary. On his return, he manages to combine his investigative work with a developing friendship with Barbary.

This is a village mystery, but we are a long, long way from St Mary Mead or "Mayhem Parva" here. The mood is realistic, and rather dark, as one would expect in a story about child murders. Procter's descriptions of place are as sound as his accounts of police procedure, and although there are really only two credible suspects, he still manages to maintain interest in whodunit.

I was impressed by this book, and I can see why Procter earned a considerable reputation in the 1950s. Even those great traditionalists, the American critics Barzun and Taylor, were great fans of his work. What is rather less easy for me to understand is why Procter seems to have fallen off the critical radar since his heyday. Julian Symons never mentioned him in Bloody Murder, and his work is rarely discussed. A shame, because he was a very capable writer.

Hell is a City - 1960 film review

Of all the black and white British cop films of the 50s and early 60s, Hell is a City stands out. There were some other good police movies, certainly, but this one, directed by Val Guest, is excellent from start to finish. There are two reasons for this.

First, the source material. The film was based on Somewhere in the City, a novel by Maurice Procter, who had been a serving police officer before his writing career took off. Procter's books were authentic, and this authenticity is, thankfully, preserved in the movie version. I've been a Procter fan for a long time, and about twenty years ago, I wrote an intro for another of his books, The Midnight Plumber, which features Harry Martineau, as this story does. The late Peter Walker, another cop who became a crime writer, told me that Procter encouraged him to join the CWA back in the 60s. They never actually met, but Peter took the advice and went on to become Chair of the CWA.

Second, the acting. The cast is excellent, and the brilliant Stanley Baker is ideally suited to the role of Martineau, who is married, but not very happily, to the equally discontented Maxine Audley. Billie Whitelaw makes a brief but telling contribution as an ex girlfriend of the killer on the run whom Martineau is hunting, and her husband is played by Donald Pleasence, taking a meek rather than sinister role for once. Joby Blanchard, who starred in Doomwatch, is one of the bad guys, and George A. Cooper, Warren Mitchell, Russell Napier, and even John Comer and Doris ("Annie Walker") Speed in very small parts, all contribute.

The story is a simple one. It's a manhunt, and we're never in doubt that Martineau will get his man. But Val Guest's screenplay compels interest from start to finish, and although Stanley Black's jazzy soundtrack is occasionally intrusive, overall it adds to the atmosphere. The scenes on the moors north east of Manchester, which a few years later would become associated with Brady and Hindley, also make an atmospheric background to key parts of the film. Recommended.

Blind Date - 1959 film review

Blind Date (no, nothing to do with Cilla Black's TV show) is a film that was re-named Chance Encounter in the US. I'm not sure that either title is quite right, but Blind Date was the name Leigh Howard gave to the source novel, published in 1955. Four years later, Joseph Losey, a capable director, made the film.It's a murder mystery, but it also seems to aim to be something more.

The film begins rather oddly, with Hardy Kruger walking along a London street, clearly happy, and accompanied by a jaunty tune (the work of the young Richard Rodney Bennett, no less). He lets himself into a well-appointed flat, but whoever he hopes to meet isn't there. He finds some money in an envelope bearing his name, but then the police turn up. Gordon Jackson plays a stolid sergeant, soon pushed to one side by a Welsh inspector played by Stanley Baker and another inspector, this time a posh fellow whom the Welshman clearly doesn't care for.

Unfortunately for Kruger's character, the body of a woman is then found in the flat. He is reluctant to explain himself, but eventually his story comes out in a series of flashbacks. He's a struggling Dutch painter who was seduced by a French woman who is older, richer, and married. (She's played by Micheline Presle, a legend of French cinema, who is still going strong at the age of 84). He protests his innocence, but he is an obvious suspect.

There's quite a nice plot twist, but I felt the mystery element of the story was a bit thin. And gifted though Bennett was, I didn't feel that his score improved the film or even captured its mood. Losey devotes quite a lot of time to issues of the class divide in Britain, and this is interesting, though again laboured. There is, however, rich compensation in the presence of Baker, one of the most charismatic actors of his time. He died at the age of 48, weeks after it was announced he was to receive a knighthood in Harold Wilson's resignation honours list. Wilson was a friend of Baker's, but for me Baker deserved to be honoured. I'm not sure I've ever seen him give an indifferent performance, and at his best he was brilliant. Here, he makes an okay film something a little better than just okay.

Robbery

One of the best gangster films I’ve ever seen is Robbery (1967.) A recent re-watching reminded me of its quality and I’m amazed that the movie isn’t regularly ranked along with other classics of the 60s like Get Carter and The Italian Job.

The film was directed by Peter Yates, and the story goes that it so impressed Steve McQueen that it prompted him to get together with Yates the following year in Bullitt. The story of Robbery was clearly inspired by the Great Train Robbery four years earlier, but the details and characters are heavily fictionalised. The scriptwriters included George Markstein, best known for his work on ‘The Prisoner’, and Edward Boyd, who wrote the tv show ‘The View from Daniel Pike’, later turned into book form by Bill Knox.

The cast reads like a Who’s Who of sixties British acting talent. Stanley Baker plays Paul Clifton, the criminal mastermind. Baker was a superb actor, knighted by Harold Wilson shortly before his untimely death at the age of 48. His co-conspirators include Barry (‘Van Der Valk’) Foster, George (‘Special Branch’) Foster, Frank (‘Casanova’) Finlay, and Ken (‘Coronation Street’) Farrington. In an uncredited bit part one can spot the young Robert Powell. The cop on Clifton’s trail is James Booth, someone who seemed at the time to be destined for stardom; it seems that booze and bad career decisions prevented this charismatic actor from fulfilling his potential. Booth turned down the role of Alfie, just as Baker had earlier snubbed the chance to play James Bond….

The style of the film is akin to that of a documentary. The pace is brisk, and the mood unsentimental, and there is no lack of tension as the plot unfolds. There have been very few better heist movies in the history of British cinema.