Tiger Bay [DVD] [1959]

Polish sailor Bronislav (Bronik), played by Horst Bucholz, has been looking forward to seeing his sweetheart in Cardiff's Tiger Bay dock area (the home place of Shirley Bassey, the British partly West Indian-origined singer). That young woman is living "loosely" and is not interested in making a life and home with the young seaman. An argument ensues and she is shot, the weapon being a revolver given to her by another lover...

The killing is seen by young Hayley Mills, a girl of ? maybe 11 (in reality, 13), who puts in a superb performance. John Mills plays the relentless detective for whom catching the criminal is all that matters. The young (20 or so) seaman and the younger girl form an attachment which is somewhere between friendship and romance but without a sexual element, perhaps a brother-sister relationship is the nearest one can get to characterizing it. She helps him to escape the police and joins him in the country, only to be caught when her photo appears in the newspaper. She then refuses to give the police evidence against him, though Mills senior tries every trick to try to trip up the little confabulator!

In the end, the young Pole has to decide whether to sacrifice himself for the girl. In the end, he even slightly warms the heart of his bloodhound-like pursuer and earns a grudging respect.

In a sense the Pole and the girl have something in common: he is floating around the world, no home, no settled life etc, she is living with an aunt and all but running wild. They both seek permanency, a home.

The film is good in itself, but is also a significant socio-historical document. Tiger Bay was, in 1959, one of the few areas of the UK which had any West Indian (or other black) population, alongside the poorest Welsh indigenous inhabitants and others. The poverty and indeed squalor of the area is well displayed and the acting of all without flaw.

These are two great 60s films in one package, they were also very cheap. Tiger Bay is a story of a child (Hayley Mills) who witnesses a Polish sailor shooting and killing his girlfriend, she befriends him, runs away with him when he goes on the run and in the end tries to prevent him being arrested by her real life father(John Mills) who plays a police officer, its heartwarming, well acted and very nostalgic. Whistle down the Wind, Hayley Mills again, living in the wilds of the Lancashire moors on a farm with her two younger siblings, they find an escaped convict in their barn and think he's Jesus, they try to keep it a secret but soon all the village children get to know about the visitor, the young lad who plays Mills brother Charles is hilarious in this, its well acted, heartwarming and quite sad, but also very funny, the young lad certainly makes this film, Alan Bates is the convict, hes great in it too. For anyone who likes 60s black and white pure nostalgia, these two films are a must, the type to curl up with on a wet saturday afternoon.

For a movie that starts with a murder fueled by rage and ends with a dangerous decision to be made in rough seas, Tiger Bay is one of the most touching and endearing studies of childhood and friendship you could hope to see. Please note that elements of the plot are discussed.

When a young Polish seaman named Korchinsky (Horst Buchholz) returns to his home port in Wales after a long spell at sea, he is the happiest man alive. He has some money in his pocket and a good-looking girlfriend. He can hardly wait to arrive at her apartment flat, which he has been paying the rent on. But he meets someone else living there. When he finally locates his girl, he finds she's been seeing someone else, a man she thinks has "class." It's the old story. She begins screaming at him. He loses his temper and screams back. She pulls a gun from a dresser drawer and orders him out of her apartment and out of her life. In a mater of seconds he's wrestled the gun away from her and she's lying dead on the floor of multiple bullet wounds. And while this has been going on, ten-year-old Gillie (Hayley Mills) has been crouched down and staring at what she could see through the mail slot in the door. Gillie is bright and quick. She lives with her aunt down the hall. She's good at making up stories, not lies, exactly, but close enough. Her friends won't play cops and robbers with her because she doesn't have a toy gun. She loves to imagine adventures. Korchinsky hears the police arriving. He hides the gun and then hides himself. As soon as he disappears, Gillie nips in and takes the gun from where she saw Korchinsky hide it. But now Korchinsky spots her.

For the rest of the movie we follow Gillie as she avoids Korchinsky, as she shows off the gun to a friend during choir, and as Detective Superintendent Graham (John Mills) questions Gillie and the neighbors to try to make sense of the murder. It doesn't take long for Korchinsky to abduct Gillie with a tale of escaping on an adventure to another country. He knows she is the only one who can identify him. Gillie, her head full of excitement, is no dummy, but she longs for what she imagines. Korchinsky, in fact, turns out to be a young man over his head, almost as young in some ways as Gillie. He begins to see Gillie as the same kind of uncomplicated dreamer in some ways he is. While he convinces Gillie not to give him away, he leaves her for a few hours so he can sign on to a ship soon to sail for Caracas. When Gillie is found alone and waiting for Korchinsky to return, Superintendent Graham must try to convince Gillie that Korchinsky is dangerous and that she must corporate to capture him. Gillie, despite the best efforts of Graham, will not betray her friend. The cat and mouse struggle between Graham and Gillie is one of the most amusing situations in the movie.

The climax is on the freighter bound for Caracas just outside the three mile zone off the coast of Wales. The inspector has arrived on a pilot boat with Gillie to identify Korchinsky. He is determined to bring Korchinsky in. Just when it looks like Korchinsky will be safe, Gillie falls overboard in the high seas. The only one who sees her fall is Korchinsky. If he lets her die unseen, he will remain on the ship and be safe as it heads away from Britain. If he dives in to try to save Gillie, he will be picked up by the pilot boat, even if he saves her, and returned to Wales, sooner or later to be tried for murder. It's his choice and he has only seconds to decide.

This was Hayley Mills first movie. She was 13 and she is extraordinary. Buchholz and Mills (her father) do fine jobs, but the movie fails or succeeds on whether or not the person of Gillie captures us. We not only have to identify with Gillie, we have to believe in her. Mills makes Gillie a person we root for, a person we understand why she won't turn in her friend even after she realizes he won't be taking her anywhere. Mills does all this with straightforward and unaffected charm, and without a speck of sentimentality.

But nothing is perfect in this world, and Tiger Bay is cursed with one of the most awful screen scores I've ever heard. It's not only loud, it's cloyingly sentimental with tons of lush strings. Worse, it punctuates every tense scene with cliche-ridden horn stings and drum beats. The score does a disservice to the movie. The DVD transfer is first rate. The movie is in black and white, and the docks and Gillie's gritty working class neighborhood look just as tough as they probably were. With the exception of the score, the movie is the work of skilled craftsmen who knew how tell a story. Be sure to get the ITV DVD release which features a commentary by Hayley Mills.