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Get Carter

Get Carter is meant to be one of those cool movies everyone is supposed to have seen. Gorgeous Landlord brought home a DVD of the Michael Caine version and we watched it while trying to occupy the same bit of sofa.

The basic plot is of the Caine character heading up north to find out why his brother was killed. He uncovers some nasty unpleasant truths, lots of lies and ends up dishing out justice to all the parties involved.

I never know what to think of Caine as an actor. As Carter he is meant to be cool but his ‘cool’ acting just comes across as psychopathically emotionless. There is one scene where his bottom lip wobbles a bit but otherwise each line is delivered in a ’speaking-clock’ type monotone.

You can tell this movie is made by men, since all women in this film have personalities, brains, emotions and identities That’s right, they are well-developed characters. Don’t believe me? Ok, you’re absolutely right. They’re nothing of the sort. They’re just meat, something for Carter to shag (and he seems to do that a lot for no reason at all – and although ok, maybe he doesn’t need a reason, but I really can’t see why the women let him cos he’s got about as much sex-appeal as a parking meter. ) The women are all pouty, silent, breathy creatures in exceptionally short skirts. In fact in one part of the film he gruffly tells his latest shag to get dressed and then leads her to the car looking like he’s not let her put her trousers on. I know minis were in, but not everyone could wear them so short. I mean, you know something’s not right when the prostitute in the film is the one in the longest skirt, for goodness sake! Mind you, they did have the legs for it. Everyone in the film had the sort of legs I’d kill for (but not give up doughnuts for, you understand – let’s not get too drastic).

There’s quite a lot of gratuitous nipple showing (honestly, I can see this’ll get men to watch the movie and everything but it started to get a bit of a joke) and rough justice showing that Carter has either no mercy or no brains since he made absolutely no plans, or precious few. He just got angry a lot.

It seems very clear to me that the sixties were a definite but not assured shift in women’s sexual identities (oh God, here comes the half-baked intellectualism, but stick with me here). The pill meant girls were sexually liberated but it’s very clear from Get Carter that no one really knew what that meant. Free sex is great, but it seemed to be entirely on male terms. Show us your goods (legs, norks) and it shifted the power balance further toward men (you’ve got no good reason to say no). I always assumed that the sexual power balance lay in female choice. There’s nothing wrong with advertising your sexuality or sexual availability but it goes both ways. If women are sex objects, then so are men but they didn’t dress or behave like it. Get Carter was male fantasy and nothing for the ladies. In the ones scene were you sort of see him having sex (with his landlady) it looks like someone trying to look like they’re not having sex. Or like it’s his first time (bless). Or like he’s the most rubbish shag you could possible imagine. I guess you have to sleep around if no one’ll sleep with you a second time…

Ok, moving away from the feminist bits, I just would like to add that what with a new pair of breasts bared about every third scene or so, I did notice that they all seemed a bit, well, small. I asked Landlord if they were avarage size to his eyes (I’m assuming he’s seen a greater variety of knockers in his lifetime but his shocked expression says maybe not or perhaps he’d rather not talk about it) cos if so, then average is a whole lot smaller than I realised. I look at mine and reckon they’re y’know generous but not OUTSIZED. I don’t have people pointing and staring or find I can’t see my feet for example but in the film they seemed rather miniature. Did women in the sixties have smaller busts or is bust-size in modern advertising exaggerated? What exactly is the average bust size these days, anyway?

uh so anyway, yes. Get Carter – um, lots of boobs, women who know their place as sex objects and some ultra-cool guy who’s bent on avenging his brother (and niece) but is apparently extremely bad in bed.

Brief Encounters

Landlord had brought two DVDs home. He borrowed them from a colleague and so we set up the laptop, lit a fire in the fireplace got the dinner on.

While cooking, he kept asking me whether I’d seen Brief Encounters (no) and reminded me that it is considered one of the greatest British films ever made (really?). He said it was very romantic (I never thought you were the romantic type) and we would watch it tonight, cuddled up on the sofa (aaaaw, what a sweetie).

If you’ve not seen it, I won’t spoil the ending but essentially it follows a happily married middle class woman (Laura) who goes to town every Thursday to do some shopping, change her library books and go to the pictures. It’s a bit of ‘me’ time for her. You meet her husband briefly and he seems a rather sweet if predictable chap. Not a bad sort, just a bit dull.

In between all the Rachmaninov, her Thursday ritual includes sitting in the railway cafe until her train arrives and one day she gets some grit in her eye and a stranger (a doctor) removes the grit and she thinks nothing more of it – until they bump into each other the following week. He invites himself to the cinema with her, they chat in the railway cafe afterwards and he insists they see each other again.

The following week she goes to meet him and this innocent Thursday rendez-vous turns into a love affair. She is tortured by the guilt but the passion and excitement is too much. Their love can’t be denied but they are both married (just not to each other).

I watched the film and am sad to report that I didn’t find it in the least bit romantic. It must be the cynic in me but I didn’t trust the dashing young doctor (Alec) one bit. He bunks off work and invites himself the cinema, he insists they see each other, he pressurises her into saying ” I Love You”. In one scene, he takes her to a fine restaurant and as he pours himself another glass of champagne I can’t help but think: You bastard! what about your wife and kids back home?! Do you buy her champagne, too?

I can see what gets the naive Laura so hooked. She’s the archetypal bored housewife and the Thursday affair is a break out of her dreary life. She feels alive again, is the centre of someone’s interest and it’s all so neatly contained in a time and place removed from her everyday existence. The affair is excitement, it’s escapism but the one thing it is not is love.

Throughout the film, each step toward a deeper affair is initiated by Alec, and of course for the sake of plot I can see why this is done – it preserves Laura’s innocence, that her character is not to blame and that this ‘just happened’ but unfortunately to my cynical eye it just looked like Alec does this sort of thing a lot and was only trying to get his leg over. I found him selfish, insensitive and extremely manipulative.

In one scene he tries to lure her to a friend’s flat he’s got the key to while his friend is out of town. She’s daft enough to go but being an old black and white movie nothing happens, as the out-of-town friend comes home early.

Of course Laura is a decent person and is wracked with guilt. She tries to do the decent thing and being sensible is all she can think of. She tries to end it but Alex won’t let her. The film is all about this inner battle but frankly what she was feeling was not love, it was infatuation, a craving for feeling desirable – as to Alec, he didn’t love her or he’d have listened to her. He seemed unaffected by her anguish over the guilt and being so torn – all he wanted was to keep her hooked.

As the film neared its end I remembered Landlord’s words that this was a great romantic classic and so I tried to put my cynicism aside and I found if you sort of squinted and tilted your head to one side, you could sort of pretend that this was love and I managed to squeeze out a little bit of sympathy for the characters in the final scene but really that was only Celia Johnson’s superb acting skills.

You know how in black and white movies the acting is so over-the top. Each line is delivered in perfect diction, with emphasis on the second or fifth word, with furtive twitches of eyebrows or distant, brooding looks just off camera , but Celia plays a genuine naturalness in her acting that I’ve never seen in a b&w film before. Her performance was the only thing worth noting in the film. It’s not a romance, it’s a warning. Love played no part in it and by the end of the film I was feeling about as gooey as a lump of granite.

Next film review: Get Carter