The Good Die Young

What a sizzling lead performance in this superb British noir film by Larry Harvey! And what a terrible irony in the title, since Larry died at the age of only 45 in 1973. I remember him so well on the day walking in Hampstead with his little daughter Domino that he told me he was dying of stomach cancer. I asked him if he were certain, if there were not something 'they could do', but he merely looked at me with his ironical smile, a resigned one, and said no, he was dying. His nonchalance did not desert him. He shrugged it off sadly but with his ingrained insouciance. His reaction to his own imminent demise had no self-pity in it, but was full of pathos, as he regretted that he would not be able to watch Domino grow up. Alas, she too has now gone. He also worried about what would happen to Paulene, who is still as glamorous as she was then. But how sadly some meet their ends. Gloria Grahame, who also sizzles in this film, only lived to 58, and Stanley Baker only made it to 48. So yes, the good die young. But Joan Collins, ostensibly only 21 at the time (but already in her ninth feature film role!), is still with us and currently working on her 119th film! This film, brilliantly directed by Lewis Gilbert (and I noted that Jack Clayton, himself later to be such a brilliant director, is credited here as Associate Producer), is a terrific psychological study of how a group of desperate men can come together to commit a crime which they would otherwise never commit. Their individual stories are all fully sketched by a cast of wonderful pros. The four men are Richard Baseheart, John Ireland, and Stanley Baker, led by the mischievous, amoral, and as it turns out, probably psychotic, Larry Harvey, as the character known as 'Rave'. The devilish, pathological scheming of 'Rave' is brilliantly shown, and in the scenes towards the end of the film, Larry is positively terrifying. Robert Morley has a brief look-in which he slightly overdoes, but then he always had a propensity to overact, especially with the excessive widening of his eyes at crucial moments. Gloria Grahame does a wonderful job of playing a lascivious, 'gorgeous pouting', totally amoral movie starlet married to the long-suffering John Ireland. Ireland doesn't know whether he wants to kiss or to strangle her, as she is so exasperating but also so irresistible. And it was not only Ireland who found her so, but a large part of the Western world. Gloria Grahame certainly had 'that something', and more besides. The most polished performance in the film is probably that by Margaret Leighton, who later married Larry in 1957 (they divorced four years later). In the film she anticipates later true events by playing Larry's older wife. She is so insouciant and acts with such effortless ease that it is like watching olive oil coat the lens. In between Margaret Leighton's arched eyebrows there lurked a great deal of intelligence, a fine sense of humour, and an appreciation of irony. The stories behind the individual characters in this film are harrowing, and Joan Collins as an emotional prisoner of her harridan mother is particularly typical of the time. In those days, girls really did feel unable to leave their mothers and were easily emotionally blackmailed by them, whereas today the young are so indifferent to lasting attachments that a parent is merely another avatar in a video game, to be tossed aside when convenient. The central character remains the spoilt, narcissistic, pleasure-loving and wholly irresponsible 'Rave', who suffers from that condition known to psychologists as 'infantile omnipotence', and who reacts to the word 'No!' with a violent tantrum. The botched burglary and its aftermath is painful to watch, but I dare not say whether any of the vexed situations which drove the participants into it are resolved, for that would give away too much. Certainly, this is one of the finer British efforts in this genre during the 1950s.

Four men are in a car. They are all from different walks of life and a short time ago none of them were nothing more than drinking buddies – now they are on their way somewhere with a box full of guns. A washed up boxer, a man trying to win his wife back from a controlling mother, an RAF officer with a cheating wife and a "gentleman" with no means of his own. Only a few weeks ago, "gentleman" Miles finds himself out of luck with his women and his money pit in-laws and, needing money so, when he meets the other three men, he sees a chance to take advance of their various needs.

For a while back in the fifties, British cinema seemed to have enough grit and clout to it to almost be able to compete with the American market in regards crime thrillers (if not quite noirs); The Good Die Young is one of those that has a good try and is a pretty enjoyable piece even if it lacks the grit and tension of similar American products. The film opens with an intriguing set up but then jumps back to establish the story and characters and it is here where it becomes weak. The back stories are rather melodramatic and it doesn't fit well with what was meant to be a bit tougher and gripping; they are interesting enough to do the job but I must admit to feeling that they were a bit dragged out and unnecessarily long. However, if you make it through this main body of the film you'll get to an ending that is just what the film should have been throughout. I won't spoil it but it is enjoyably brutal, downbeat and gripping – "about time" was my thought when I realised that the film had gotten going.

The cast do their best with the melodrama but the material isn't there for them and they are mixed. Harvey and Baker stand out with strong performances; Basehart is good but Ireland feels like he is just making up the numbers. Naturally Collins stands out today, and she is quite good but the melodrama is made better by Grahame, Ray and, to a lesser extent, Leighton. Of course the men are all much better in the proper crime side of the film and this is partly due to better and more atmospheric direction from writer/director Gilbert, who also injects the pace when it is required.

Overall this is an average film mainly because the back story takes up far too much of the film, is too melodramatic and doesn't sit well with the tough tension promised in the first scene and delivered at the end. With the main trunk being rather plodding, the ending does feel a lot better mainly because you're grateful that the film has gotten going. Could have been great but is merely reasonably good; worth seeing for genre and period fans but will not impress a wider audience.

What a cast! Basehart, Harvey, Baker, and Ireland turn out stunning performances in this British film noir entry. The story is of three decent men, on hard times that are enticed to robbery by the one bad seed amongst them (Harvey). Also interesting to view Joan Collins in an early role, man she was REALLY hot when she was young. The tale is told in flashback, and younger viewers, more inclined to slash and bang, might find it a bit slow, but the ending is both subtle and surprising. A good one.

The Good Die Young comes at you from the very beginning; a honking, blaring opening consisting of the front of a car filling the screen. We appear to be on the back of the vehicle in front, that sensation of being chased through the dimly lit public streets in the dead of night most certainly prominent. British director Lewis Gilbert begins his 1954 heist film in a stark and unmitigated fashion, that sense of having something you don't want right on your tail or looming over you as you attempt to get away; his film going on to document a handful of characters as disparate as they are desperate with a foreboding sense of the inevitable looming over each of their heads as they ponder a heist set against each of their respective financial situations. But where the opening is frank in its immediacy, The Good Die Young goes on to morph into a rather intimate character study about a handful of men brought together through the same reason to take part in the same task.

The film is ultimately about the allure of crime than anything else; those expecting a gangster film will be rather sorely disappointed, with Gilbert's film coming to resemble more a class drama than a crime genre piece. It's bookended by the men clustered together with tensions running high and a sorely undesired predicament looming, a clerk named Joe Halsey (Basehart) narrating to us how it was he and three others got to be occupying a rich playboy's car sizing up an object and wielding pistols; the finale a quite gripping trawl through the murky, cobbled streets of 1950s Britain as police officers; stray freight trains and unfaithful partners in crime each pose their own threats. It's here Gilbert proves he's just as apt at dealing with dramatic action set-pieces as he is engaging us with character: specifically, who's involved; what's at stake; who's going where, and why; the internal 'checkpoints' the characters must reach as well as the sorts of action that must be undertaken, the man having his characters in The Good Die Young pay special attention to both the methodical planning and dealing with each obstacle within an action set piece which needs separately dealing with during the final getaway.

Gilbert executed similarly effective craft later on in his career, namely when he was granted the helming of three separate films within the James Bond cannon. 1977's The Spy Who Loved Me saw an extended scene on board a tanker ship nearer said film's climax and required its lead to first get aboard; find some trapped hostages; recover them only to discover a wall of seemingly impregnable steel; find something which might destroy that; obtain it, and then follow through once again with the next course of action. The attention to such things were initially used to a lesser degree of success in 1967's You Only Live Twice. But in The Good Die Young, a similarly effective craft is evident behind not only the finale but the getting to this point; the film coming to resemble one long flashback told to us by the aforementioned Joe involving a whole group of people brought together through problems with money.

The film does its best to intrinsically link each man, each one being of a respective background in class and career; one of whom is a boxer named Mike Morgan (Baker), a man at the end of his stretch as a fighter - the ring-set howls and wails as another fatal blow is landed upon a poor opponent much to the glee of the crowd echoing down below into the locked room as Mike sits there knowing one of his hands is on the brink of being seriously damaged as it is. Meanwhile, American pilot Eddie Blain (Ireland) refuses orders to ship out to West Germany with the American air force to instead zero in on his wife and her infidelities; whereas narrator Joe maintains a rocky relationship with the mother of his own wife, something he gets involved in so much so that flying back to England from his American-based clerical job to get involved sees him fired.

So each man is rather attuned to their wives, Mike's relationship seeing him admit to lending his hard-earned cash to his own wife's brother if she'd told him to; his ultimate goal to take his large earnings and escape to his beloved. Furthermore, each man's respective situation in each of their jobs sees them hit a proverbial wall bringing about unemployment or redundancy; each of the three men additionally appearing to have served in a respective war and two of them have experiences with near-death or great harm of some kind in that Joe's mother in law attempts suicide and Mike must come to have some serious work done on his hand.

The men are eventually thrust together by the seemingly indomitable Miles Ravenscourt (Harvey), a young man, whom might be richer than he actually is, but whom occupies a plush and far richer locale; a self indulgent man whose home is rife with portraits of himself and whose wife Eve (Leighton) must suffer his begging for more money despite both parties' knowledge of his trouble with gambling debts; a man so estranged from his father, that he hopes to outlive him so that Miles may never see any of his inheritance, such is is ill-minded way with money as the film will go on to document. As previously mentioned, the film is more about the allure of crime or the idea behind a criminal act that'll greatly benefit oneself arriving with a sense of enticement, than most others things. The duality in each of the four men may appear looser than desired, but Gilbert crafts rather-a taut and tight heist film about desperate people doing desperate things at desperate times.

Coming to this with neutral expectations, and fresh from seeing Harvey in 'Room at the Top' for the umpteenth time, I was quite surprised to find it watchable, with lots of interesting facets and a cast who complement each other well. Baker (an actor whose work seems to be undergoing some appraisal at film festivals lately) gives some dignity to the down-on-his-luck prizefighter; Harvey convincingly plays an upper-class slimeball alternatively charming and terrorising his wife (interesting played by Margaret Leighton, who would become Mrs Harvey in real life), sparring with the father who despises him, and poisoning his 'friends' lives like a devious snake. Ireland, as the bitter GI with a film star wife flaunting her infidelities each time he comes home from leave, is effective, while Basehart, with a weedy wife and an overbearing mother-in-law, puts across his frustations nicely. So much for characterisation. The film is mainly taken up with a series of flashbacks, showing how the four men find themselves in the situation we see them in at the start. Once it moves back into the present, it feels rushed and the final moralistic voiceover almost kills it. Amongst the other players, Joan Collins as Basehart's wife doesn't do much besides pout and look pretty, while Gloria Grahame as the film actress manages to be simply irritating. All things considered, the film isn't a total success but has enough going on to keep you there with it.