Greater love hath no man than this
"Tiger Bay" is one of the best British films of the late fifties, and can be classified as forming part of the "kitchen sink" social-realist movement which was a noted feature of the British cinema during those years, although it perhaps has less in the way of social comment than some other films of that type, concentrating more on thriller elements. It was made by the talented director J. Lee Thompson, who was responsible for another great film from the previous year, "Ice Cold in Alex". Like many of the best British movies, this one has a strong sense of place. Tiger Bay is a working-class area of Cardiff around the city's docks, noted for its multi-racial and multi-cultural character long before multi-racialism and multi-culturalism became buzzwords of political correctness. Many of its inhabitants were foreign seamen, and the area also became notorious for a high level of unsolved crimes, committed by men who disappeared back to sea before the police had a chance to arrest them.It is one of these seamen who is at the heart of the film. Bronislaw Korczynski is a young Polish sailor who returns from a voyage to find that his girlfriend, Anya, has left him for another man; a violent quarrel ends with him shooting her dead. Unknown to him, the crime has been witnessed by a twelve-year-old girl, Gillie, who was watching the scene through the letterbox. (For some reason, the name "Gillie" is always pronounced with a hard "g"). Like Korczynski, Gillie is an outsider in Tiger Bay; she is originally from London and lives with her aunt. (She is possibly an orphan, although this is never made clear). She finds Korczynski's gun, which he has hidden after the killing, and takes it, hoping that it will win her more acceptance among the local children, who have excluded her from their games of cowboys-and-Indians on the grounds that she does not possess a toy gun of her own. Korczynski goes on the run from the police, hoping that he can sign on a foreign ship and be out of the country before they can arrest him for the murder. Realising that Gillie can identify him, he kidnaps her to prevent her from talking to the authorities, and a strange friendship grows up between them. This friendship can be seen as a result of either Gillie's first romantic love or the desire of a fatherless girl for a father-figure in her life (even though Korczynski is hardly old enough to be her biological father).
This was Hayley Mills' first film and her performance is absolutely captivating. It made her an instant star, and led to her being signed up by Disney. She did, however, have time to make one more great British film, "Whistle Down the Wind", which has certain parallels with "Tiger Bay". In both films Hayley plays a young girl who befriends a criminal on the run, and both strongly evoke a spirit of place. (The later film is set in the rural hinterland of a Lancashire mill town). In both films the principal male character is a murderer, and yet not entirely unsympathetic. Alan Bates' Arthur Blakey in "Whistle ." is a rough, taciturn man, but there is something about his demeanour that suggests he could have been better under different circumstances.
Horst Buchholz's Korczynski is perhaps even more sympathetic than Blakey. Indeed, the film seems designed to arouse our sympathy for him. He is young, good-looking, hard-working and friendly (one of our first sights in the film is of him stopping to play with a group of children). He is in exile from his homeland, at this period under an oppressive Communist regime. He seems to be desperately in love with Anya, even though she (to judge from the little we see of her) hardly seems to deserve him, and his crime was committed in a moment of passion. This is one crime film where the audience will all be rooting for the criminal to get away. It would have been impossible for any adult star to avoid being upstaged by the irrepressible Hayley, but Buchholz comes close to holding his own with her. There is also a good performance from Hayley's father, John, as the policeman leading the investigation.
"Whistle Down the Wind", in which the children mistake Blakey for Jesus Christ returned to earth, is a deeply religious allegory of the Christian faith (which makes it something of a rarity in cinema history). "Tiger Bay" also has religious overtones, underlined by the fact that Gillie is a chorister at her local church, although they are less marked, and there is no consistent allegorical pattern. The film's climax comes when the police board the Venezuelan ship on which Korczynski has signed on. Because, however, the ship is outside Britain's three-mile territorial limit, they have no legal power to arrest him, and the ship's captain refuses to allow him to be removed. Gillie has been brought on board by the police, who hope that she will identify Korczynski, but she refuses to betray her friend, and attempts to run away. In doing so, she slips and falls overboard. Without hesitating, Korczynski, who is a strong swimmer, dives into the sea to save her, even though he knows that this will lead to his arrest for Anya's murder and possibly to his execution. (Britain still had the death penalty in 1959). This scene brought to my mind the words from St John's Gospel "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends". 9/10
score 9/10
JamesHitchcock 7 November 2007
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1759631/34959
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