Stars: Stanley Baker, John Crawford and Donald Pleasence
Based upon the 1954 novel by crime novelist Maurice Procter, a
former policeman who served for 19 years with the Halifax police force,
Hell Is A City is a highly effective and punchy 1960 British Film
Noir/police procedural drama, mostly set on the mean streets of
Manchester.
Made by the famous Hammer film studio and directed and written by one of
its star directors, Val Guest (The Quatermass Xperiment, Expresso
Bongo, The Day The Earth Caught Fire), Hell Is A City is most notable
for a driving, Elmer Bernstein style Crime Jazz score by Stanley Black,
Arthur Grant’s (The Curse Of The Werewolf, The Devil Rides Out) lush
black and white cinematography depicting a forbidding and mostly
vanished post war Manchester and by a fine cast, lead by the
irreplaceable Stanley Baker.
The opening titles of the movie set the tone: shot from the back seat of
speeding police car, the silhouettes of the driver and his partner face
the icky blackness of the night, illuminated by their car headlights,
ominous speckles of neon and the street lights of central Manchester,
while Stanley Black’s (in the early 1950s he habitually topped the
Melody Maker chart of the most-heard musicians on radio) blaring big
band soundtrack blasts a suitably portentous accompaniment. Guest
transforms Manchester into a twilight vision of urban inferno Manhattan,
as it was envisioned by fellow Brit Alexander Mackendrick’s 1957
classic Sweet Smell Of Success.
Harry Martineau (Stanley Baker: The Cruel Sea, Zulu, Accident) is a
tough, dedicated police inspector on the trail of Don Starling (John
Crawford: The Enforcer), who escaped from prison after serving 5 years
of his 14-year prison sentence for a jewelry robbery, and killed a
warden in the process. Inspector Martineau was the arresting officer and
knew the troubled Starling from his youth. He suspects Starling will be
traveling to Manchester to recover the stolen jewels he hid away before
being convicted.
As Martineau deduces, Starling returns undetected to Manchester and goes
to see Laurie Lovett (Charles Morgan: Sergeant Cork), who was in on the
jewelry heist. Grateful Starling never turned him in Lovett finds him a
place to hide at night. He reveals his plans to get a phony passport
and flee the country, but not until he gets all the money he needs to
implement his escape. He plans the next day to rob the bookmaker Gus
Hawkins (Donald Pleasence: Halloween) of his gambling take with the help
of Lovett’s gang.
The robbery expectedly does not go as planned and the gang is forced to
disappear in different directions. Starling contacts Gus’ wife Chloe
(Billie Whitelaw: The Omen, Frenzy) with whom he previously had an
affair. She hides him in the attic located in the bedroom but when Gus
takes a peek thinking he heard a noise, he is hit on the head and
hospitalized with a concussion as the police take note that Starling has
been spotted for the first time in Manchester and thereby connect him
to the robbery. As inspector Martineau tracks Starling down, the gang fall one by one, until only the murderer is left.
Upon its release in 1960 Hell Is A City was acclaimed for its realism,
bold depiction of violence and gritty Manchester locations, while
nominated for two British Academy Awards for Best Screenplay and Most
Promising Newcomer for Billie Whitelaw. More than half a century later,
the films faults are glaringly obvious ”“ the portrayal of the troubled
domestic life of Martineau and his wife is unconvincing (all would be
well if she would just submit to his desire to bear him children),
American actor John Crawford’s complete inability to muster a halfway
convincing English, let alone Mancunian, accent, a somewhat cliched
illustration of working class life and the sanitized depiction of the
Manchester police force, which is without any single taint of corruption
lurking in the shadows.
Yet the fantastic Stanley Baker’s intensely committed performance, which highlights the fact that the obsessed Martineau has really no life outside police work and that he will freely use any degree of emotional blackmail upon those he questions, regardless of the consequences, in order to catch Starling, endures. Coupled with Grant’s striking location photography (very well served by this digitally re-mastered DVD) of vintage Greater Manchester locations (including Piccadilly Gardens, Moss Side, Oldham, Levenshulme and Strangeways prison) and Black’s propulsive score, Hell Is A City remains an exciting proposition.
Images: Marcus Brooks
Review: HERE
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