To my mind the movie was a failure because of the acting, but largely because these virtually all British actors (except La Rue) were straining to fake American accents, and that caused their intonation to be 'off.' Everything sounded poorly acted, but sometimes I would imagine the actors speaking their lines in their native British accents and they would be fine.
They could have just made it as a British drama, but then it might have seemed unbelievably violent for that culture... even as "American" the violence never seemed as motivated as it is in noir and gangster films in the USA of the era.
It remains a very peculiar film. The relationship of Ma to Slim was never fully clarified, either.
They could have just made it as a British drama, but then it might have seemed unbelievably violent for that culture... even as "American" the violence never seemed as motivated as it is in noir and gangster films in the USA of the era.
It remains a very peculiar film. The relationship of Ma to Slim was never fully clarified, either.