the audience applauded

Simply Perfect

Admirable film.

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

This film blew me away. Ostentatiously about a murder being witnessed by a young girl and the subsequent strange relationship that grows being her and the killer, it covers so much more ground than that... including the multicultural explosion that occurred in Britain during the 50's and a bygone era when kids could play out on the streets till long into the evening because their parents knew they'd be safe. Both still hot topics today.Hayley Mills, before Disney got hold of her and transformed her into the star of homogenised fare such as The Parent Trap, is a true delight. With her hair cut short and no interest in dollies whatsoever, she plays a truly likable character called Gillie who is tougher than any boy around, and providing a great counterpart to Horst Buchholz's guilt-ridden murderer and John Mills's dogged detective (and yes, that IS her father) . He woulda got away with it too, if it weren't for them meddling post-war censors who would insist 'good must always triumph over evil at the end'.Every scene and passage of dialogue feels like a gem, all performances cannot be faulted in their authenticity... and it has two of the most memorable closing lines I've heard of late. Even the shooting locations set the mood perfectly, and become part of the drama. It is beyond my comprehension why this isn't widely considered to be a classic. Oh well, it'll always have a place on my shelf. 8/10

Hayley Mills is really a piece of work in this film, a brazen tomboy caught in mid growth-spurt, unshaken by any circumstance. Her boyishness, even with her short hair and unisex jeans, is thoroughly undermined by her feminine features. Her blue eyes are doll-like, her eyelashes pale. Her plump lower lip has to be seen to be believed -- or rather witnessed, since whenever Mills is concentrating or squinting, it assumes idiosyncratic and sometimes frankly sensuous configurations. It's no wonder she became a Disney favorite.She's cute as hell and a good little actress too. She outshines Horst Buchholtz in some of their scenes together. As an illustration of her natural talent, watch her being interrogated by a policeman, John Mills, her father. He tells her to sit in a chair and answer his questions. She sits. He asks her questions, slowly, one at a time, but she never immediately answers because she's improvising the description of the murderer as the interview stumbles along. And, between answers, the director, J. Lee Thompson, allows her time to send her face through all sorts of spasms and contortions without ever quite overdoing it. It's an utterly charming performance -- and this is a thriller about a murderer and his diminutive confidante.Buchholtz is a Polish sailor who shoots his girlfriend to death during a fierce argument. Mills spots him and he traps her in a church attic. He can't very well kill the gangly kid, and they get to know one another. Buchholz winds up praying.That's not as bad as it sounds. It's not that kind of movie. Mills' attempts to protect Buchholz from the police are mostly comic. The climactic scene aboard a Venezuelan freighter has him giving up his freedom to save Mills' life, but that's not as bad as it sounds either.Beneath the comedy and suspense lies an interesting question about lying, sometimes called "the brother's dilemma" in psychology. What circumstances -- what features of a relationship -- justify lying to save someone else's hide? This script brings the police, the murderer, and Mills together in a final confrontation. Should she continue to lie in order for him to escape? The usual moral scenario would have her break down and confess to the police, with Buchholz carted away, a sneer on his face. But that's not what happens here.J. Lee Thompson, the director, made a couple of good, rip-roaring movies, including "Cape Fear", "The Guns of Navarone", "Ice Cold in Alex," but was more of an efficient technician than an artist. Yet he handles most of these scenes with an unexpected delicacy. Unfortunately the lighting of the first half of the film is stark and noir-like, dampening the emotional effect of the developing friendship.What we see of Cardiff, Wales, is pretty dismal -- all cold bricks and dripping water, much as I remember it from the train. It's as ugly and poor as where I grew up, and only slightly less dangerous. The movie itself is a bit too long for the material, and the director makes too much use of close ups, especially of Buchholz's shayna punim and Mill's unspoiled freshness.I have to go back to the scene in which Mills' Daddy is trying to squeeze the truth out of her about the appearance of the murderer, while she sits in the chair and grimaces. Was the murderer fair? "Fairish." Was he fat? "Fattish." Was he tall? "Tallish." I saw it tonight for the first time since its release and it still strikes me as hilarious.

'Tiger Bay' is undeniably an original film. But even the most original films take inspiration from other films to some degree. That is impossible to avoid. Even if only in mere details. I'd say that the inspiration for 'Tiger Bay' came directly from one of the finest movies ever: 'The Window' (1949). At least in both a child witnesses a murder.John Mills, a honorable actor, stars in this but the great surprise is his daughter, the no less famous Hayley Mills. This was her acting debut, before her Disney days. She had no acting experience before, which is almost too difficult to believe, considering her brightness. Horst Buchholz is great too.Hayley Mills plays Gillie, a tomboy. Despite that and her boy-like hair, she's utterly cute. Ironically she looks innocent yet she's not all that innocent. In fact, she is wayward and has the habit of lying. Through the mail slot, Gillie witnesses a murder committed by a young polish sailor (played by Horst Buchholz).There are many authentic scenes with children playing in the streets, settings of docks and other stuff and shots of docks filmed in great angles.The whole church sequence, from when Gillie sings in her choir until she is chased by the criminal into the attic (it's all dark and she's alone with him) and confesses what she saw is very good and well-done. It's a tense and suspenseful scene. The film is generally quite good until well beyond that. Later on, it's still good enough but not as good. The ending sort of redeems itself, thanks to its greatness.

"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