The Long Good Friday Dir.

John McKenzie, 1979)

LO: Understand the social and historical context of the film and its main themes.

 Gangster heavy much more realistic shadowing the social realism genre e.g. this is england Gangster light portrayed gangster life in a hazy manner with actions exagerrated for a comedic effect e.g. snatch, lock stock

 The film was based on he build on the London Dockyards as Britain attempted to move into the 21st century. The story follows British gangster Harold Shand he attempts to get some American investment to develop an area for the olympics.

The Long Good Friday was one of the first British gangster films to be released and with its nudity, harsh language , realism and parts of comedy, added by the director John Mackenzie, it shocked audiences worldwide

David Wood from BBC films said A touchstone for many of the sub-standard gangster films Britain mercilessy churns out today. The Long Good Friday is classy fare and superiror to its modern counterparts in every way.

 The Long Good Friday tackles issues such as corrupt policemen, IRA, gun running, free market economy and Thatcher. All relevant issues at the time.

 The method in which the story is told is very clever, none of the time slips or anything as arty as that, it is told straight and simply, the film opens with scenes where don't actually think much is happening and in reality don't actually make that much sense, that is until these are mentioned further on in the film where pieces of the puzzle begin to fall together.

Background to the film

The film was directed by John McKenzie and produced for 930,000] by Barry Hanson from a script by Barrie Keefe, with a soundtrack by the composer Francis Monkman it was screened at the Cannes, Edinburgh and London Film Festivals in 1980.

 The original story had been written by Keefe for Hanson when the latter worked for Eustone Films, a subsidiary of Thames Television. Euston did not make the movie but Hanson bought the rights from Euston for his own company Calendar Films. Although Hanson designed the film for the cinema and all contracts were negotiated under a movie, not a TV agreement, the movie was eventually financed by Black Lion, a subsidiary of Lord Grade' ITC Entertainment for transmission via Grade's Associated Television (ATV) on the ITV Network.

 The film was commissioned by Charles Denton, at the time both Programme Controller of ATV and Managing Director of Black Lion. After Grade saw the finished film, he allegedly objected to what he perceived as the glorification of the IRA and it was scheduled for transmission with heavy cuts on 24 March 1981.

 In late 1980, Hanson attempted to buy the film back from ITC to prevent ITV screening the film with these cuts which he said would be "execrable". and added up to "about 75 minutes of film that was literal nonsense The rights to the film were eventually bought from ITC before the planned ITV transmission by George Harrisons company Handmade Films for around 200,000 less than the production costs. They gave the movie a cinema release.

 Harold Shand (played by Bob Hoskins), an old fashioned 1960s-style London gangster who is aspiring to become a legitimate businessman, albeit with the financial support of the American Mafira, with a plan to redevelop the disused London Docklands as a venue for a future Olympics.

 The storyline weaves together the events of the late 1970s, including low-level political and police corruption, IRA gunrunning, the displacement of traditional British industry with property development and the emerging free market economy.

The Falklands War

The Falklands War (Spanish: Guerra de las Malvinas/Guerra del Atlntico Sur), also called the Falklands Conflict/Crisis, was fought in 1982 between Argentina and the United Kingdom (UK) over the disputed Falkland Islands and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands. The Falkland Islands consist of two large and many small islands in the South Atlantic Ocean east of Argentina; their name and sovereignty over them have long been disputed.

 The war lasted 74 days. It resulted in the deaths of 257 British and 649 Argentine soldiers, sailors, and airmen, and the deaths of three civilian Falkland Islanders. It is the most recent external conflict to be fought by the UK without any allied states and the only external Argentine war since the 1880s.

Thatcherism
Thatcherism claims to promote low inflation, the small state and free markets through tight control of the money supply, privatization and constraints on the labour movement.

 David Marquand expressed the "authoritarian populist" sentiment in 1970s Britain that Thatcherism supposedly exploited: "Go back, you flower people, back where you came from, wash your hair, get dressed properly, get to work on time and stop all this whingeing and moaning."Norman Tebbit, a close ally of Thatcher, laid out in a 1985 lecture what he thought to be the permissive society that conservatives should oppose: Bad art was as good as good art. Grammar and spelling were no longer important. To be clean was no better than to be filthy. Good manners were no better than bad. Family life was derided as a outdated bourgeois concept. Criminals deserved as much sympathy as their victims. Many homes and classrooms became disorderly - if there was neither right nor wrong there could be no bases for punishment or reward. Violence and soft pornography became accepted in the media. Thus was sown the wind; and we are now reaping the whirlwind.

Another important aspect of Thatcherism is the style of governance. Britain in the 1970s was often referred to as "ungovernable". Mrs Thatcher attempted to redress this by centralising a great deal of power to herself, as the Prime Minister, often bypassing traditional cabinet structures (such as cabinet committees). This personal approach also became identified with a certain toughness at times such as the Falklands War, the IRA bomb at the Conservative conference and the Miner's Strike.

Critics of Thatcherism claim that its successes were obtained only at the expense of great social costs to the British population. Industrial production fell sharply during Thatcher's government, which critics believe increased unemployment which tripled by 1984 (though receded to one and a half the level she inherited by 1990). When she resigned in 1990, 28% of the children in Great Britain were considered to be below the poverty line, a number that kept rising to reach a peak of 30% in 1994 during the Conservative government of John Major, who succeeded Thatcher

The Long Good Friday is the first truly Thatcherite piece of cinema, a movie that predicted the burgeoning growth and development of London into a world city, a magnet for new non-manufacturing business, a city willing to embrace the free market and exist at the very epicentre of a global economy. And it was through the single-minded prosperity of the City of London that the rest of the nation enjoyed the prosperity that followed.

Harold Shand; gangster, visionary and entrepreneur. For many, The Long Good Friday is the finest British gangster film ever made. Much as I concur with that recommendation, to describe it as merely a gangster movie is to be excessively reductive.

Harry Shand epitomised everything that the new Right could have hoped for. He was the celebration of the thrusting individual, a character alight with imagination, a man who, bike-bound, would happily have sought any opportunity for self-betterment. He was the ambitious working class, a dyed-in-the-wool Tory who had pulled himself up by the bootstraps. It was millions of Harry Shands across the length and breadth of the country who carried Margaret Thatcher to power and smoothed the way for the political, cultural and social transformation of the United Kingdom. The single marked difference between Shand and Thatcher is that Harry embraced Europe; he saw London as being the potential jewel in the newly formed European economic crown. As for Margarets attitude to Europe... Methinks her antagonism is well-documented.

The London we see in John Mackenzies film is a desolate, desperate, derelict London; Docklands is an urban wasteland, undeveloped and possibly regarded as undevelopable. The city is tired and tiring; were it not for a handful of iconic images like Tower Bridge and the three-terminalled Heathrow, one would be hard-pressed to recognise the place at all. Shands vision for London is eerily premonitory. He wishes, through the influence he has nurtured and developed with corrupt council officials and bent coppers, and the sheer force of personality and his passion, to redevelop the Docklands, to turn his beloved London into a great world city. His hope is that a redeveloped London might one day host the Olympics. Doesnt that sound familiar? Shand realises that this dream is too vast for him alone to achieve. He has decided to pull the Yanks in; American Mafia money invested in London. He is going global. Hands across the Atlantic is what Shand suggests they drink to as he, his cronies and the American Mafia delegation cruise down the River Thames on his spectacularly gaudy boat. He has even hired a French-speaking chef to cook poncy food for his guests. It is at this moment Shand offers his treatise, his agenda for change; Tower Bridge in the background offering history to offset Harrys future vision of his beloved hometown.

And the near-prophetic nature of the film extends beyond its politics, beyond its desire for change. There are also echoes of Godfather Part III; Shand, albeit with Mafia money, is trying to elevate himself out of gangsterdom into the realms of respectable business. Little does he know that once a gangster, always a gangster. Barrie Keeffes screenplay has East-Ender Shand coupled with Helen Mirrens upper-middle-class Victoria (even a regal name). The ambition and aspiration of Harry Shand is even apparent in his love life. This class difference is at the very heart of the film and in many ways prefaces the Conservatives attempts to break down class barriers and allow the working classes to gain prosperity. The film also manages to have a go at the special relationship between the Americans and the English. The Yanks love snobbery. They really feel theyve arrived in England if the upper class treats em like s***. Viewed again in the harsh grey light of today, The Long Good Friday has a lot to teach us. Grand plans are great but we have been guilty of overstretching ourselves, de-regulating ourselves into financial oblivion. We levered our entire society against the hope that the money markets, a collection of self-interested individuals, would see us good. They didnt. And now, like the gangland bosses in the film, our society has been hung upside down from a meat hook. Weve all had it sweet. Ive done every single one of you favours in the past Ive put money in all your pockets. Ive treated you well, even when you was out of order, right? Well now theres been an eruption. Its like f***ing Belfast on a bad night. Art imitating life?