Hell is a City

Star Review

Although French cinema was falling into the clutches of the auteur in the late fifties, nothing quite so exotic was happening in Britain, where, despite its own burgeoning New Wave, popular movies were still very much in the hands of the journeymen – those time-served technicians who were not afforded the indulgence of ‘art’ and were expected to bring in films on time with no fuss or flowery talk. Perhaps the best of these practitioners was Val Guest, whose Hell Is a City was just one of a number of bracing genre pieces he turned out at a staggering pace in the fifties and sixties.

Guest had begun his film career co-scripting Will Hay comedies in the thirties. After graduating to directing, he proved adept at pretty much everything from science-fiction (The Quatermass Xperiment) to showbiz musicals (Expresso Bongo) to Hammer horror (The Abominable Snowman).

It was for Hammer that Guest added another string to his bow with Hell Is a City. Coolly following the Stanley Baker’s Inspector Martineau around Manchester’s outer reaches in the hunt for safecracker-turned-killer, Hell is unique in its merging of an almost verite-style sense of urban location with heightened visuals that owe a clear debt to American thrillers of the forties. And Guest successfully steers his cast away from the staid conventions of the contemporary English crime drama. Baker’s Martineau is peculiarly un-British – rugged and pragmatic, but flawed and vulnerable. Billie Whitelaw brings customary depth to the obligatory tart-with-a-heart role. And, in an early appearance, Donald Pleasance oozes back-street sleaze as a crooked bookie.

For all its nods to provincial realism, Hell Is a City is laced with the time-honoured signifiers of noir. It stands today as a lively pulp portrait of a post-war town on the slide.

Julian Upton on 1st March 2005

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Film Description

Gritty police drama with Stanley Baker as the world-weary detective on the trail of an American gangster. Set in a grey Manchester, it's an abrasive piece given authenticity by the use of hand-held cameras and a number of the extras being played by the Manchester Police Force. A genuine British film noir.

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Cast

Billie Whitelaw, Donald Pleasence, Stanley Baker, Maxine Audley, John Crawford

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