Tiger Bay (1959)

Tiger Bay
Directed by J. Lee Thompson
Written by John Hawkesworth and Shelley Smith from a short story by Noel Calef
1959/UK
The Rank Organization/Independent Artists
First viewing/FilmStruck

[box] Mrs. Phillips: It’ll be all right, he says. A fat lot of good the police are. We’ve got one in the house and a murder’s done right under his nose and now here’s a child whose got hold of a gun and they don’t even know where she is![/box]

Hayley Mills’s film debut is a taut,  suspenseful thriller.

The setting is Cardiff, Wales.  Korchinsky (Horst Buchholz), a sailor, collects his paycheck and sets off to his girlfriend’s flat, planning to ask her to marry him.  Simultaneously, we are introduced to twelve-year-old Gillie (Mills), a London transplant.  The neighborhood kids won’t let her play with them because she doesn’t have a cap pistol.  The small cap “bomb” she owns doesn’t cut it.  She heads home to the flat she shares with the aunt whose prime goal seems to be to keep her out from underfoot.

Gillie guides Korchinsky to the building where both her family and the girlfriend now lives. They hit it off splendidly.  Soon after, Gillie overhears shouting in Polish in the girlfriend’s apartment and starts peeking through the keyhole.  Finally she sees Korchinsky kill his lover, who left him for another man.  She hides while he flees and sees him hide the murder weapon.  She picks it up with ideas of becoming a big wheel with the kids.

A police investigation begins.  This is the kind of neighborhood where distrust runs high and people are not inclined to cooperate, whether they have anything to hide or not.  Gillie outright lies, at first because she does not want to relinquish her prize.  Later, after Korchinsky finds her and tucks her firmly under his wing, their friendship becomes the prime motivator.  With John Mills as the inspector.

I really liked this one.  This film depends upon the difference between a child’s perspective and reality and works quite well.  The specter of an innocent youngster with a loaded gun alone guaranteed this would be a nail-biter for me.  The ramifications of Gillie’s lies as the film progresses add to the potential consequences and the suspense.  Hayley Mills inherited her father’s talent and made for a convincing tomboy heroine.  Recommended.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPoK4SWff4I

Clip with Hayley Mills commentary

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uU8GTKQFBAA

Trailer