GET CARTER

: ''For the 2000 remake with Sylvester Stallone see Get Carter (2000 film)''
'''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.
Hodges's first directorial job, the film was based on the 1969 novel ''Jack's Return Home'', and the screenplay was written by Hodges. The film went from novel to finished film in just eight months, with location shooting in Newcastle and Gateshead lasting just forty days. The film was produced by Michael Klinger and released by MGM.
This film was also Alun Armstrong's film debut.

Contents

Plot

Cast and crew

Music

Early criticism and cult status

Remakes

Memorable quotations

Locations

Promotion

Trivia

External links

Plot

Jack Carter is a Newcastle-born gangster. Now based in London, he works for Gerald Fletcher (Terence Rigby) and is having an affair with his wife Anna (Britt Ekland). As the film opens, Jack returns to Newcastle to attend the funeral of his brother, Frank. Although Frank supposedly died in a drunken car accident, Jack suspects he was murdered and methodically sets out to uncover the truth.
After arriving and setting himself up with a room in a small terraced house, Jack begins to re-establish links with his family and past associates. He meets up with his niece, the mousy Doreen (Petra Markham), attends his brother's funeral, where he meets Keith (Alun Armstrong) and chats threateningly with Margaret (Dorothy White) Frank's girl.
He meets up with Eric Paice (Ian Hendry) at a racetrack. His intended target, Albert Swift (Glynn Edwards), makes a rapid retreat as he sees Carter. Jack follows Paice as he chauffers local criminal big-shot Cyril Kinnear (John Osborne) to his impressive country home (Dryerdale Hall). Carter forces his way into Kinnear's home, where he is met with polite courtesy from Kinnear and a general air of incomprehension. He also meets Kinnear's latest girl, the provocative Glenda (Geraldine Moffat). However on his return to his lodgings with Keith, he is approached by Thorpe (Bernard Hepton) and some thugs and told to leave on the next train to London. Carter beats them up and chases and grabs Thorpe. Thorpe gives him the name Brumby.
Cliff Brumby (Bryan Mosley) is a blustering businessman with a controlling interest in local arcades. Jack accosts him at his home and takes only seconds to size Brumby up as a red herring; indeed, in Jack's absence, the goons return, attack the landlady (Rosemarie Dunham) and drag Keith away.
The following morning Jack is surprised in bed, with his landlady, by two further villains - Con McCarty (George Sewell) and Peter 'The Dutchman' (Tony Beckley) - who have been sent to take him back to London. Jack, stark naked, forces them out of the house with a shotgun and then escapes out the back. The fact that so many people want him out of Newcastle only strengthens his suspicions about Frank's death.
Jack follows up on Keith and finds him at his home, terribly beaten. Jack offers him scant sympathy and some money ("Here. This'll pay for a course in karate"). Keith is not pleased. He reveals that Jack had been having an affair with his brother's wife, thus calling the fatherhood of Doreen into question. Jack then meets with Margaret again, on the 1849 "Iron Bridge," but is interrupted by Con and Peter. They chase him, but he is rescued by Glenda in a Sunbeam Alpine. She takes him to Brumby in a half-built restaurant atop a multi-story carpark, the famous “Get Carter Car Park”. Brumby gives him Kinnear's name as Frank's killer and offers him £5,000 to kill him, Jack turns him down.
Jack accompanies Glenda to her flat (in St Cuthbert's village) and encounters a terrible revelation, an amateur pornographic film featuring Doreen, as a clearly unwilling participant together with Glenda, Margaret, and Albert Swift. Glenda, unaware of Jack's connection to Doreen, confirms the film belongs to Kinnear, with Eric as Doreen's procurer (there is some indication that Jack is the girl's biological father, since he was having an affair with her mother, Frank's wife, at the time.)
Jack's subsequent revenge is unrelenting and brutal, played out against an authentic background of Tyneside in the late 1960s/early 1970s: smoky bars and working men's clubs, derelict urban housing. Jack takes out each of his enemies with no remorse and utter brutality. For example, he has Kinnear arrested for murder by killing Margaret, dumping her body in water near Kinnear's home and then phoning the police, but prior to that he phones Kinnear and blackmails ''him'' to double-cross Eric by sending him to a clearly fatal meeting with Jack. He chases the last of his brother's killers, Eric, along an ugly industrial black beach with piles of coal slag. Jack dispatches Eric in a manner similar to Frank's death - forcing whisky into him before killing him.
The end is unusual and shocking. Jack strolls along the beach and appears finally content. He is about to toss his gun into the sea , but before he can complete this symbolic act a paid assassin ("J"), contacted by Kinnear the previous evening, kills him with a long shot to the head.The film ends with a shot of Carter's corpse on the lonely beach , the wind providing a bitter soundtrack as the cold waves wash over him.

Cast and crew

As well as Caine, the film gave roles to

★ the playwright John Osborne as gang master Cyril Kinnear,

★ Ian Hendry as gangster Eric Paice,

★ Bryan Mosley as businessman Cliff Brumby,

★ George Sewell as gangster Con McCarty,

★ Tony Beckley as gangster Peter the Dutchman,

★ Glynn Edwards as gambler Albert Swift and childhood friend of Carter's,

★ Terence Rigby as gang master and Carter's boss Gerald Fletcher,

★ Godfrey Quigley as a work colleague of Frank Carter's,

★ Alun Armstrong as Keith, another work colleague of Frank's,

★ Bernard Hepton as Thorpe, a gangster,

★ Petra Markham as Frank's daughter Doreen (one twist to the plot is that she may actually be Jack's biological daughter),

★ Geraldine Moffat as Kinnear's moll Glenda (who is also sleeping with Brumby in exchange for the use of a penthouse flat),

★ Dorothy White as Margaret, a married woman whom Frank Carter saw 'once a week',

★ Rosemarie Denham as B&B owner Edna Garfoot, and

★ Britt Ekland as Anna, Carter's boss Gerald Fletcher's mistress, but who is also seeing Carter and is due to run away with him to South America as soon as Carter avenges his brother's death.

Music

The distinctive 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 much admired 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). It has often been used as incidental music for TV programmes and adverts since, most with no connection whatsoever to the film.
The influential 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, Volume 2'', 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.

Early criticism and cult status

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 much-respected American film critic Pauline Kael was however a fan of the film, admiring its 'calculated soullessness'. A minor hit at the time, the film has become progressively rehabilitated via subsequent showings on television; 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 movie 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 (not by Terence Rigby) for American release with 'won't take kindly to someone from London poking his nose in', as tape previews in the USA had revealed that many Americans did not understand what 'Smoke' and 'bugle' meant in this context. Also the line 'I smell trouble, boy' is edited out, for no apparent reason. DVD releases within the United Kingdom under the 'Iconic Films' label also have this change.

Remakes

''Get Carter'' was remade in 2000 under the same title, with Sylvester Stallone starring as Jack Carter. Michael Caine appearing as Cliff Brumby and Mickey Rourke plays the villain Cyrus Paice. This remake was almost universally poorly received.
''Hit Man'', a 1972 blaxploitation film starring Bernie Casey and Pam Grier is also a scene-for-scene remake, crediting Ted Lewis in the opening titles.

Memorable quotations

★ Carter: ''A pint of bitter'' (snaps fingers as barman walks away) ''in a thin glass.''

★ Carter to Eric: ''You know, I'd almost forgotten what your eyes looked like. Still the same. Pissholes in the snow.''

★ Eric to Carter: ''So, what're you doing then? On your holidays?''
Carter: ''No, I'm visiting relatives.''
Eric: ''Oh, that's nice.''
Carter: ''It would be... if they were still living.''

★ Cyril Kinnear: ''You don't give a man like Jack a drink in those piddly little glasses. Give him the bloody bottle.''

★ Carter to Brumby: ''You're a big man, but you're in bad shape. With me it's a full time job. Now behave yourself.''

★ Carter (naked, pointing a shotgun): ''Out!''
Con McCarty: ''Come on Jack, put it away. You know you're not going to use it.''
Peter: ''The gun he means!''

Locations

The novel on which the film was based, ''Jack's Return Home'' was not set in the northern town of Doncaster, but neither is Scunthorpe explicitly named as its location (Jack makes only a connection at Doncaster railway station for an un-named steeltown), although the film is set exclusively in Newcastle upon Tyne and Gateshead. Other locations in Northumberland and County Durham were also used. 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 over which Carter pursues Eric, although seacoal residues are still plentiful.

Promotion

The poster (illustrated) does not represent the film accurately. Carter is never seen wearing anything as gaudy as a floral jacket, Eric does not carry a gun at any point (indeed, the gun shown in the poster closely resembles Carter's), and the grappling man and woman do not resemble any characters in 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 is in anyway accurate is the depiction of Kinnear struggling in police hands.
Promotional shots exist from the film showing Carter holding a pump action shotgun. The first (found in some books about Gangster films) shows him pointing the gun at the camera and to a person who has not seen the film would appear to be an actual still. The second (found on the back of some DVD Covers, i.e. the Australian release of the film) is more clearly a promotional shot and shows Carter posing with one arm around Anna (Britt Ekland) and the other holding the pump action shotgun by his side.

Trivia

The elderly man who glances at Carter when he orders his drink has an extra finger on his right hand, the hand in which he holds his old-fashioned beer mug.
The eventual assassin, 'J', is also present in the railway compartment occupied by Carter on his outward journey to Newcastle. He is seen reading a book as the train passes the cereal factory at Welwyn Garden City. He is seen again reading a newspaper as the train pulls into Newcastle station as Carter gets ready to alight. No link is ever drawn in the storyline, however, between these early appearances and the film's denouement.
Notorious London actor, later turned gangster and London protection racketeer John Bindon has an appearance in the intro.

External links

★

★ ''Get Carter'' Location Tour

★ ''The Real Get Carter''