Sean Connery plays a West End tough in this Noir masterpiece
Credit: Collection Christophel / Alamy Stock Photo
In the golden age of the gangster film – the 1930s to the 1950s – it was all Hollywood, with a bit of French chucked in: Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, George Raft, Jean Gabin, Lino Ventura. The British made occasional attempts – notably Brighton Rock, though that is more a film about religion and, one senses, Pinkie’s repressed homosexuality – but whatever was happening in real life (and there certainly were vicious gangs in Britain), our film industry showed little interest in reflecting it. The censors were a problem, though less censorious than their American counterparts. Perhaps producers assumed that there was no appetite for scenes of brutality and violence: Jack Warner being shot by the minor-league hoodlum Dirk Bogarde in 1950’s The Blue Lamp (still, I believe, one of the finest British films) was about as far as studios or audiences were prepared
‘The Hard Crowd’ Reveals Rachel Kushner s Literary Life Through Death
Her latest book, a collection of 19 essays that spans art criticism, journalism and memoir, is an exhaustive examination of what it means to write
‘Neither tragic nor legendary, I myself will never die,’ writes Rachel Kushner in ‘Made to Burn’. She means that no one will write about her death. Her subjects, though – the rough-housers, activists, nihilists and stoics that people her first nonfiction collection,
The Hard Crowd: Essays 2000–
2020 (Simon & Schuster, 2021) – are another story. Her dope-using neighbours from the Tenderloin in San Francisco are dead. So are the bartenders and regulars at the Blue Lamp, a dive where she poured drinks before she moved to New York to be a real writer. Her father-in-law, a lifelong trucker, died at 48, and his trucker brother died, too, still trying to shift gears on his gurney: their deaths haunt the kindness of strangers she encount
Perth-born jazz hero Bill Kemp was on the same bill as The Beatles thecourier.co.uk - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from thecourier.co.uk Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.