The Long Goodbye

If you want to see really good screen acting, just watch the last couple of minutes of 'The Long Good Friday' and watch Hoskins go through a dozen emotions just using his massive face and expressive eyes. Subtle, believable, you can read his frantic jumble of thoughts so well that it doesn't need anything apart from a big close up - the moving picture that says a thousand words. The car journey from hell - to hell.    

Who Lit The Fuse?

'The Long Good Friday' takes two bete noirs of the seventies - gangsters and the IRA - and makes them fight, like 'Alien Vs. Predator' with worse teeth. it's a superb film: lean, savage, surprising - and the ending is one of the most unnerving in British cinema.

Bob Hoskins plays Harold Shand, a pugnacious East End crook who, having risen to the top by killing all of his opponents, is now looking to consolidate his position by doing a deal with the Mafia to develop what is now known as Docklands, just in time, he hopes, for Britain to host the 1988 Olympics. Without Shand's knowledge, a few of his mob have (rather unwisely) pissed off the Irish Republican Army, who then go after Shand and his boys with all the knives, guns, bombs and masonry nails they have at their disposal.

A film rich in dialogue, atmosphere and performances, 'The Long Good Friday' packs about three hours of story into just over an hour and a half and, like all the best tragedies, ends up with more or less everybody dead, lost or facing disaster or, in Harold's case, a mix of all three, as we never find out exactly what happens to him, although I think its safe to assume the very worst.

Perhaps the benchmark for the British gangster genre, how can you not love a film where Belloq from 'Raiders Of The Lost Ark' gets knifed trying to pick up Pierce Brosnan? Or where Denzil from 'Only Fools & Horses' gets his bare arse slashed with a machete? Or, best of all, where Charlie from 'Casualty' is stabbed repeatedly in the jugular vein with a broken bottle? All in all, it's a pretty stabby sort of film (although there are also shootings and blowing ups): brutal, brilliant, British.

The Long Good Friday

If You're Curious About Terror...

As you might guess from my nom-de-plume, ‘Unman, Wittering and Zigo’ is a great favourite of mine and, indeed, it has an awful lot going for it: great cast, oblique, unusual script, an interesting location and a pleasantly ambiguous ending. It’s a small film in terms of scope and execution, but it's hugely effective. 

The fantastic David Hemmings plays John Ebony, an inexperienced school teacher who snags a temporary job in a prestigious boys school in an isolated part of Devon, replacing a teacher who has died suddenly and under mysterious circumstances. According to the boys in the class, however, there is no mystery: the man was murdered, by them, and, if Ebony doesn’t watch his step, they’ll kill him too.

It’s a great opening gambit, and although the film doesn’t quite keep the tension up as much as it could, it positively smoulders with repressed emotion, suppressed violence and crazy hormones, culminating in a suspenseful and unpleasant sequence where Ebony’s attractive wife is menaced with gang rape by twenty over excited youths dressed in shorts.

The boys, class 5B, are very well played by slightly over age but convincingly spotty and smackable young actors, some of whom (Michael Kitchen, Michael Cashman, Tom Owen) went on to some degree of recognition. The performances are uniformly excellent, actually, from Hemmings’ sulky and immature teacher to Douglas Wilmer’s splendidly vague Headmaster and Caroline Seymour as Ebony’s neglected wife. A special commendation goes to Tony Haygarth’s amusing and likeable turn as Cary Farthingale, a cynical art teacher who drinks like a fish and genuinely doesn’t give a shit.

A fascinating study of the complex politics and savagery of the mob (not to mention the fear adults regard the coming generation with – here, perhaps, justified) , ‘Unman, Wittering and Zigo’ is apparently still  shown in schools to aid pupils study of Giles Cooper’s original play, which makes it even harder to understand  why it is not on DVD, although can watch the whole thing on YouTube here if you are so inclined.

Unman, Wittering and Zigo