This blog post will look at some of the wider contexts associated with Get Carter including:
Historical background
Social contexts
Influences
Director: Mike Hodges
Genre: Gangster
Get Carter – debut feature film
Had previously worked in TV drama
Uses realism of T.V drama background to good effect
TRADITION
Get Carter draws upon long line of British gangster and crime films
Genre which British excel at
BRITAIN IN THE 1960s
Period of prosperity and social change
Time of experimentation in drugs, sex and music
‘Swinging Sixties’ summed up by the hippie sub-culture
BRITAIN IN THE 1970s
Country was starting to experience the downside to the ‘Swinging Sixties’
Unemployment was going up
Economy was falling
Sixties ‘dream’ fading
Social change in country
Seen through use of harder drugs, pornography and violence on a wider scale
GEOGRAPHICAL CHANGE
Areas such as Newcastle were changing in the late 1960s/early 1970s
High-rise flats and office blocks replacing traditional homes and communities
Get Carter shows the time between the old ways and new re-structuring
Old houses and traditional factories of the north-east
Being replaced by...
‘Brutalist’ modern architecture of the early 1970s
NEW BREED OF GANGSTER
Money to be made by criminals during recession
Film’s representation of gangsters very realistic – dangerous, violent, unfeeling, professional
Has roots in real life British gangsters of the 1960s
THE KRAY TWINS INFLUENCE
Ron and Reggie Kray
‘Ran’ London’s east end from late-1950s to 1968
Feared by other gangsters and criminals
Some people believed London was safer when the Kray Twins were in charge
Brutal and vicious
Ran a crime ‘empire’
Kept violence for those who ‘deserved’ it – rival gangs, petty criminals etc.
Only killed once each, but ordered ‘hits’ on many more
GEORGE CORNELL
Ronnie shot George Cornell
Location: Blind Beggar pub, Whitechapel
Reason: Cornell was member of rival Richardson gang and had insulted Ronnie about his
sexuality
JACK 'THE HAT' McVITIE
Reggie knifed Jack ‘The Hat’ McVitie to death
Location: house in Stoke Newington, east London
Reason: McVitie had ‘disrespected’ the twins
These sequences taken from The Krays (1991), starring Gary and Martin Kemp as
Ronnie and Reg, shows the murders of Cornell and McVitie. According to members of
gang, Ronnie taunted Reggie repeatedly about killing someone, and that Reg couldn't be
thought of as a real man unless he had done the same. The intensity which Reg killed
Jack reflects the goading from his twin brother.
Both arrested for the murders and given life sentences in 1969
Britain’s gangland continued to thrive throughout the 1970s
Other gangsters still operated – some connected to the twins as ‘family’ or rivals
LINKS TO GET CARTER
Michael Caine knew the twins
Grew up in tough area of London (Bermondsey, in south London, location for Harry
Brown)
Caine represented the ‘glamour’ which the twins liked to associate with
He talked to real gangland figures about how to play the role of Carter - they advised
him on the clothes to wear, how to talk, and most importantly how to walk like a
gangster
GERALD AND SID FLETCHER
Gerald and Sid Fletcher - Jack's bosses
Only seen briefly at beginning
Names mentioned throughout film - omnipresent through their reputation
Could be seen as 'Kray' type gangsters
CONCLUSION
Debut film for British director (see also The Long Good Friday, Lock Stock and Two
Smoking Barrels, and Harry Brown)
Get Carter follows in line of British crime films
Represents the harshness of early 1970s Britain
Shows how crime and criminals changed with the times
Has links to real life crime as seen with the Kray Twins
Characters in the film may be partly based on real life criminals of the time
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