Evengyny
Thanks for the memories!
Borserie
it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.
Donald Seymour
This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.
Spikeopath
Good-Time Girl is directed by David MacDonald and collectively adapted to screenplay by Muriel Box, Sydney Box and Ted Willis from the novel Night Darkens the Street written by Arthur La Bern. It stars Jean Kent, Dennis Price, Herbert Lom, Bonar Collleano, Peter Glenville, Flora Robson and Jill Balcon. Music is by Lambert Williamson and Clifton Parker, and cinematography is by Stephen Dade. This is the story of Gwen Rawlings (Kent), a 16 year old British girl who ran away from home and met trouble around every corner she turned... The under represented genre of film dealing with juvenile female delinquency has always been a tricky subject for film makers to tackle, even more so back in the day as it were. Here in 1948 is one of the best of its kind, and this even after the BBFC enforced some tone downs of violent scenes and requested that a moral message framing device open and close the story. It's even thought that the Government of the time got involved, such is the wariness of how authority dealt with a troubled female teenager. The whole film is relentlessly bleak, even as young Gwen strides out with determination and stoic strength, her ebullience infectious, there's sadness or tragedy about to enter the fray. Her whole life spins out of control the moment she is caught returning a brooch she borrowed from the Pawn Shop where she works. She had been out dancing the night before and wanted to look smart, so she took the brooch thinking nobody would mind as long as it was put back the next day, but her boss catches her returning it and isn't as understanding as she had hoped. In fact he is prepared to turn the other cheek in return for sexual favours! To which she promptly says no and slaps him one. From this point on Gwen's life slips into a vortex of misery and disaster. After a savage beating by her father, who is incensed about her "theft" and sacking from the Pawn Shop; which is filmed skillfully by MacDonald who fades the scene to black, she runs away to start a new life, a 16 year old girl alone in the big city. She seems savvy enough, but she is quickly duped by a fellow lodger at her boardings (Glenville on wonderfully spiv oily form) and even though she lands a hat-check job at Max Vine's (Lom) nightclub, things quickly turn sour. Either by bad luck, bad judgement or just being around bad people, Gwen is on course to be wrongly sent to an Approved School, which is basically a euphemism for Girls Borstal it seems! The only bright spot in her life is Michael "Red" Farrell (Price), a genuinely kind man but one who is also married. While there at the "school" Gwen goes through metamorphism and turns into a warrior bad girl, a plot line that John Cromwell's 1950 film Caged would follow. She befriends the tough cookie "mommy" inmate, played by Daniel Day-Lewis' mom, Jill Balcon, and before you know it she is the hard nut who thinks of nothing to bullying other girls and escaping at the first chance she gets. Now she's a fully fledge escapee, a hardened hard drinker and smoker, sexually matured and venturing still further down life's dark alleyways. And worse is to come, because fate dictates that she again will fall in with the wrong people, but willingly so this time, until finally fate deals its fatal blow, a coup de grace that stuns with the bitterest of ironies. Cast are excellent, with Kent a revelation playing a girl ten years younger than her actual age. Direction is smart and brisk, while Dade's photography is always in the realm of film noir, with perpetual shadows and darkened streets, smoky clubs and depressingly foreboding institutions lighted accordingly. The message of the movie is a bit hazy, is Gwen's downfall the product of her torrid home life? A failure of the authorities to get her the help she needed? Or is it that Post War British Society had changed its outlook and was now looking after number one? Either way, Good-Time Girl is a biting bit of British noir, thrusting the female lead into a world where she is abused and used by those around her, harassed at regular intervals, and of course guided by that old devil of film noir, the vagaries of fate. 8.5/10
JohnHowardReid
What is film noir? The genre has been described by a number of eminent critics as a movie, predominantly photographed in low-key lighting, and set in the "unstable universe" of the crime underworld in which "frightened, fugitive characters struggle to survive." Film noir has a cohesive visual style. Dark, brooding images reinforce the noir movie's overall downbeat mood. The other consistent aspect of the genre can be found in its protagonists. They are usually ordinary people—good people at heart. Often alienated from society, they yet find themselves hopelessly entrapped (either through no fault of their own at all or a very minor failing) in the very milieu from which they are desperately trying to escape. The more they struggle against their fate, the deeper they sink into the swamp.A masterpiece of the genre, Good-Time Girl is one hundred per cent film noir. The movie outraged censors in its day and it still packs a tremendous wallop. A scathing indictment of the British justice system, the movie presents us with an ill-fated heroine (most expressively acted by Jean Kent).The nightmarish film noir quality of the story is abetted by the unique device of having it narrated in a perfectly straight fashion by the very same hideous person who sent our innocent heroine to the Dickensian reformatory. What is even more horrifying is that the brutal, brainless, totally insensitive and remarkably evil Flora Robson character uses the harrowing story neither to accuse herself nor to deny her own prime involvement in this shattering and totally inexcusable miscarriage of justice. Instead, she regards it as her "duty" to use it to point an unacceptable moral to all young girls to stay at home – even though they may be independent and earning a good wage – and put up with all the filth and squalor and brutality of the slums. It's impossible to reconcile Robson's "moral" with good sense, let alone justice and equity. No wonder the Australian censor banned the film!The filmmakers themselves admitted in a synopsis provided to the Library of Congress that their movie was an exposé of British "justice" in which the innocent victim is brutalized at every turn until finally she is put away for a fifteen-year stretch for a crime in which she was a most unwilling accomplice.These disturbing elements are driven home by a series of brilliant performances: Jean Kent as the beleaguered heroine; Peter Glenville as her spivvy accuser; Jill Balcon as "king" of the reform school; Flora Robson as the vicious magistrate; Beatrice Varley as the heroine's mother; Elwyn Brook-Jones as her lecherous employer; Griffith Jones as the vengeful Danny; and Danny Green (we see only his back, but what an expressive back it is)!David MacDonald is not normally a director that I would go out of my way to salute, but in this case he has directed with force, pace and imaginative flair, aided by superbly noirish black and white camera-work and some marvelously atmospheric sets.
Alex da Silva
The Juvenile Court chairman (Flora Robson) recounts a story to Lyla (Diana Dors) to put her off a life of crime. We follow the story of Gwen (Jean Kent) as she runs away from home and gets mixed up with shady characters. Each situation that she finds herself in leads to new tragedies until the end where she accidentally meets up with Red (Dennis Price) again, the only man that she has ever loved. However, she is now part of a ruthless gang - she tries to save Red from his fate at the hands of this gang but things have now gone too far out of control. At the end of the film, Lyla decides she doesn't want a life like Gwen's and agrees to go home to her parents....This is a fast-moving film. We have at least four separate sections which involve Gwen and a different set of friends as she drifts through life. The cast are good and we are taken through a world of nightclubs, street gangs, playboys, borstal, soldiers on the run and we also have a doomed love interest. No-one does well in this film and I mean NO-ONE. It's a downbeat film but enjoyable.
drednm
The 27-year-old Jean Kent plays 16-year-old Gwen in this excellent and harrowing British film that looks at the downfall of a good-time girl.Told as a cautionary tell by Flora Robson (a court officer) to Diana Dors (a possible delinquent), the story of Gwen combines parts of all those Hollywood movies starring Lana Turner or Susan Hayward in which the good girl goes bad---and PAYS for it.Gwen is a well-meaning girl who comes from a violent home and likes nice things. After a final beating from her father on being fired from a job in a pawn shop, she runs away and gets an apartment in London. There she meets a man who gets her a job in a nightclub. From then on she's on a descent into a world of booze and sleazy men. She never really does anything wrong but she crosses the wrong guy and he gets even by framing her in a jewel heist. She's sent to a reform school, learns to be really tough, and escapes to live an even wilder life of men and booze. The final sequence of events is mesmerizingly horrible as Gwen gets framed one last time.Jean Kent is terrific and totally believable as the willful teenager and party girl. She's as good as any tough girl in any Hollywood film. Supporting cast offers a few great roles here: Griffith Jones, usually a nice guy, plays a sadistic thug; Jill Balcon (mother of Daniel Day-Lewis) is great as the vicious Roberta; Herbert Lom is subdued as Maxie the nightclub owner; Beatrice Varley is good as the hapless mother; Dennis Price is memorable as Red; and Flora Robson scores again as the court official.Just a terrific little film.....
