written by Barrie Keeffe
directed by John Mackenzie

Criterion #26.

This isn’t a movie I’ve heard much talked about. But it’s a winner. And you can stream it on Netflix.

There were a number of moments when I thought, “Well! I’ll be sure not to forget about that when it comes time to write it up!” (Which is a needless, distracting thought that I wish I would never have.) But now that the write-up has arrived, I realize that pretty much every one of those things I wanted to mention would be spoilage of one sort or another, and why would I do that to you? Describing things that surprised or entertained me is just a way of stealing them from you, or at least diminishing your pleasure by interposing myself. And I’m skeptical of my motivations — I think at some level I’d be trying to get credit for the things by being the one who saw them first. That’s no way to be. If I’m going to get people to love and admire me for a blog entry on The Long Good Friday, I’m going to need to do it all on my own, and not e.g. by mentioning that OMG you guys this movie has a kind-of-amazing scene where ____ (you know, ____ from ____) and a very young ____ look like they’re about to ____ in a ____. But then ____ ____ ____ instead. (Do you love me yet?)

Here are a few things I can say without getting in your way:

* The music is awesome, and I use the word advisedly. Not literally, of course, but advisedly. Click and be enlightened: the Main Title. (Being your Criterion mixtape track 26, naturally.)

That tune has been running in my head near-continuously since I watched the movie. The score is by Francis Monkman, who has almost no other film credits, which seems to me a real shame. Because while this may just sound like typical cop-show syntherie to you, it is actually very carefully calibrated and serves the movie memorably well. I won’t go into detail, but suffice it to say that the relationship of what the music is selling (drive, glamour and grit, cynicism, knowingness) to the characters and the action is not fixed; it serves in different ways over the course of the movie. It’s really a top-notch score, given the style. By the end you will think so too.

Or not. I just saw someone on Netflix singling out the score as distracting and saying that it ruined the movie. Well, not for me.

* Admittedly, there is one sequence where creepy, icy music seems to denote the ominous underworld of HOMOSEXUALS. Though, well, maybe that’s not what the music turns out to mean after all. But it certainly is meant to play off the viability of that association. The scene would certainly be scored differently today. (Obviously the entire movie would be scored differently today, as the sample above should make clear.)

* The whole thing looks like a liquor ad from a 70s magazine: cold white highlights on warm dark wood, the luxury of everything tending to black. This is a basic appeal, not to be underestimated.

* Criterion Coincidence: Oddly enough, Alphaville star Eddie Constantine is in this one too! He’s not so great.

* The movie is far from perfect by present-day standards. But its imperfections were very comfortable for me. There have been major shifts in filmmaking priorities since 1979. The aspects of writing, directing, acting (yes, and music) that today seem corny or sloppy or unrefined about this movie just don’t seem important to me. Whereas it has a kind of calm purposeful quality, taken for granted in 1979 and now strangely rare, which is to me incredibly valuable. I enjoyed watching this movie because I can benefit from the things that era took for granted. That’s the basest, most indiscriminate form of nostalgia, I know (“I’m totally obsessed with the 19th century”) but who’s to say that isn’t one the primary functions of the cinema? It’s genuinely useful to be exposed to other ways of feeling and being, artifacts of times and places when those ways of being were unconscious and uncontroversial; the better to assume them, if one chooses, in a time when they need be conscious and potentially controversial.

* Not that I want to be like anyone in this movie. But I’d like to walk at the same pace they do; I’d like the shadows in my life to be as black as theirs were. When they pick up a glass to have a drink, I’d like to pick up a glass that way.

* The only extras on the (out of print) DVD were previews. There is however a recent “documentary” on YouTube, perhaps from a more recent DVD edition, and I watched that. It’s not all that great. In it Bob Hoskins confirms what one suspects, watching his performance — that he’s really just playing himself. Except as a crime boss. This is basically why the movie works and why it catapulted him to, well, a Bob Hoskins level of fame: even his exaggeratedly pop-eyed, clench-jawed reactions are watchably natural. This gives him freedom to do some very subtle things as well.

* Helen Mirren’s presence is as (similarly) reassuring and easy as ever, but her performance per se is a little inconsistent, which surprised me. Luckily in this movie’s world it doesn’t matter. Maybe I imagined it. She’s fine. Who doesn’t like Helen Mirren? Maybe I take it back.

* There’s a tiny bit of unpleasant violence. Reader B, there is a scene with exactly the thing you hate the most, but it doesn’t last very long. However the movie does sneak up on you and become surprisingly intense despite how casual it all seems. That’s praise. I’m just giving a parental warning.

* The story is fairly standard gangster fare on the largest structural level and the smallest (i.e. in individual scenes) but at the intervening levels are some interesting ideas that set this movie slightly apart thematically and tonally. I don’t think I’ve seen many other British crime movies so I don’t know how unique it really is, but word on the internet is that this one is at the top of the British heap. The script is from the golden age of sturdy screenwriting and has many nice little touches.

* The movie starts with 6 minutes of stuff that you don’t fully understand and won’t until much later. What’s that money for? Who’s the guy? Where’s he taking it? Who are those guys? What’s going on? This is a once-standard device for movie intrigue, to draw you in and turn on your brain (though not frequently used anymore, it seems to me). It needs to be handled with care, and I think it is, here; it offers just enough thread to follow that we don’t mind not knowing what it’s tied to or what direction we’re following it. But it struck me that while it’s customary for the action in such an opening sequence to be inherently intrigue-worthy (i.e. a briefcase full of money, murder, a coffin, etc.), the technique would work just as well with anything. A man is carrying a carton of milk. Where’s he going with it? What’s the milk for? If you drag that out for six minutes it would feel like you’re watching a fascinating mystery. And then when you suddenly cut away elsewhere to the main action of the movie, it would give just as much spice to what followed. Why did we see that at all? When are we going to find out what the milk was for? Highly intriguing. You could probably make a whole movie consisting only of different sorts of mundane nothing, and create a strong sense of suspense just through editing. If one of you can name an existing such movie please do.

* You’ll just have to accept that you can’t understand all the Cockney. “Grass” means informer. (Grass, grasshopper, copper.)

* I know this is an awfully pedestrian entry but that’s what you get for not wanting spoilers.

* Hey, if you do watch it, come on down to the comments.