The Wee Man.

Another film that the critics don’t agree with me on is a gangster movie directed and written by Ray Burdis and based in Glasgow, (but filmed in the East End of London because the Strathclyde police were not chuffed by the way they were portrayed in the movie!)  The Wee Man (2012) depicts the ‘true’ story of the Scottish gangland villain Paul Ferris who from the age of nineteen became an enforcer for the notorious Glasgow born gangster Arthur ‘The Godfather’ Thompson, collecting debts and allegedly administering ‘justice’ on the big mans behalf. The movie looks at Ferris’s background, his family and friends and how he came to become a criminal. It is claimed that his life of crime started when following several years of bullying by a local criminal family, and still a teenager, he carried out a series of revenge knife attacks on the brothers and was arrested and sent to Longriggend Remand Centre. It was on his release he came to the notice of the man that was to rule Glasgow’s criminal underworld for over thirty years.

 

Thompson Snr, Thompson Jnr and McGraw.

Paul Ferris with Martin Compston. 

The strength of this movie, which was based on the books that Ferris wrote while he was incarcerated over the years, is in the acting. Martin Compston, who has been appearing in the very well received BBC crime drama The Line of Duty, brings Paul Ferris to life, while John Hannah, who played Rebus in the TV series of the same name from 2000 to 2001 before Ken Stot made the character his own in 2006, makes a convincing fist of Tam ‘The Licensee’ McGraw. Also in the cast are Patrick Bergin as Arthur Thompson, Stephan McCole as Thompson Jnr Arthur’s son and Rita Tushingham as Arthur’s loyal wife. Also it would be remiss not to mention Denis Lawson who brings a real touch of class to the role of Paul Ferris’s dad.  All right it not the Godfather (1972) or even Peter Mullan’s Glasgow crime story Neds (2010) but it was certainly worth digging out of the bargain bins at Fopp’s.

Resurrected.

Paul Greengrass began his film-making career at Granada TV in Manchester in the 1980’s where he made the highly regarded documentary series World in Action known for it’s important news stories. This experience encouraged his interest in the Falklands war and the story of a young 18-year-old soldier, Philip Williams who 6 months after joining the army found himself at the height of battle. With the encouragement of Film 4, which was happy to nurture new talent, Greengrass went to visit Williams after he had left the army and the young man related his story of torment and bullying to the director who decided that this human account of a someone coming back from the dead who was initially excepted as a hero and then as a deserter, would make a great subject for his debut feature film. At this time Greengrass was filming The Live Aid Concert at Wembley and pitched his idea to Adrian Hughes and Tara Prem the producers of the concert who decided to produce what was to become Resurrected (1988). Based on the directors ideas Martin Allan wrote a screenplay that was to be a fictional tale but based on what Williams had related to Paul Greengrass.

This raw imaginative story of our time, filmed on location in and around Huddersfield Yorkshire, has David Thewlis, in what he counts as his debut feature film, playing Kevin Deakin the young soldier posted missing presumed dead in the Falklands who has a memorial service with full military honours back in the Lancashire village where he grew up. Seven weeks after going missing, to the embarrassment to all concerned, he turns up, confused, but very much alive. Fuelled by tabloid press stories accusing Deakin of desertion he is ostracised by the villagers and treated abysmally by his fellow soldier on returning to barracks.

Thatcher war cemented her power.

The Falklands conflict cemented Thatcher’s power over her party and parliament, encouraging the country to adopt a type of triumphalism which can been sampled in the powerful but unpleasant scenes of institutionalised bullying melted out by soldier’s in Deakin’s unit. Greengrass had previous experience of this subject when he made a World in Action which involved the suicide of a young soldier who been bullied. Maybe a little televisual but a very worthy debut for the director who went on to make more dramatisations of real life events including Bloody Sunday (2002), United 93 (2006) and Green Zone (2010). He was quoted as saying that he was very proud of his first film but would have made it slightly differently if he were to make it today.  Thewlis is superb as Deakin making the young soldier totally believable with great support from Tom Bell as his father and Rita Tushingham as his mother.

A Place to Go.

A Bright New Future?

As John Hill commented in his book British Cinema 1956-1963 one of the most striking characteristics of our home-grown cinema towards the end of the 1950’s was its increasing concern to deal with contemporary social issues and a series of films that became known as the Social Problem Film. Director Basil Dearden and producer Michael Relph were responsible for some of the best of this genre including Sapphire (1959) that dealt with race problems and the controversial Victim (1961) the first mainstream film to deal directly with homosexuality. A Place to Go (1963) is the last of these types of films by the successful partnership and deals with the subject of youth and it’s involvement with criminality.

As the Daily Cinema remarked at the time of the films release “The film is very much concerned with the wind of change which is blowing through the East End of London, (Its set and filmed in Bethnal Green) a wind which is sweeping away the close packed street’s of drab little houses (and as it turned out the close knit working class community as well) and bringing new, shining modern flats in their place. The trouble is that this wind blows too fast for the old but not fast enough for the young. As we now know the shining modern flats would eventually develop their own problems.

A night out at the Stow for Cat and Ricky. 

The plot of this youth orientated story involves an East End family living in what the authorities called slums, but what they call home. Dad leaves his job in the Docks after a row with his union, whom he accuses of being worse than the bosses, and has turned to busking the cinema queues. This new arrangement is not to the liking of Mum, a women who is quite content in keeping her small terraced home in an immaculate condition and to prepare and serve the family meals, as long as Dad brings in the money. Also living in the house is the central character Ricky who works in the local cigarette factory, his sister Betsy, her husband Jim and a newly born baby. Ricky gets involved with the local gangsters who plan to rob his work place. He also has an infatuation with one of the criminal’s girl friend’s, Cat. 

Pop singer Mike Sarne.

Bernard Lee, famous for his role as ‘M’ in eleven James Bond films between 1962 and 1979, plays Matt Flint the father, Pop singer Mike Sarne, who had a UK number one hit in 1962 with Wendy Richards called Come Outside, is the unsettled and ambitious Ricky Flint, with Rita Tushingham, a famous face in many sixties movies including A Taste of Honey (1961) and The Leather Boys (1964) is Ricky’s love interest Cat Donovan. You may recognise Doris Hare, who plays house-proud Lil Flint the mother, from the popular TV sitcom On The Buses in which she again played mum. 

The film successfully captures the spirit of the old East End. Unfortunately Clive Exton script has not got the potency of the previously mentioned films, both written by Janet Green, but the cast do their best to overcome the problem. Incedently the film had to wait ten months for its release because at that time Bryanston, an independent film company formed after the collapse of Ealing Studio, was having problems with its distribution network, some things never change.