How To Dress Like A Gangster


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How To Dress Like A Gangster

How To Dress Like A Gangster

The year 2010 marks the 30th anniversary of The Long Good Friday, one of a small group of excellent British gangster movies that include such cult classics as the 1970 Get Carter. A new Blu-ray edition of The Long Good Friday is being released on August 24 to commemorate the event, a salute to the film’s continuing popularity and growing prestige: the British Film Institute lists the movie as number 21 among the top 100 British films of all time.

Part of the movie’s sustainability is the remarkable performances of actors who would become fixtures in movies during the next thirty years. The Long Good Friday launched Bob Hoskins’ US career and features the stunning Helen Mirren in an early performance as the gangster’s moll.

Original Screenplay

The Long Good Friday was not adapted from another source like the Godfather, which developed from a Mario Puzo novel. Rather, the story is an original concept by English playwright, Barrie Keefe, and it’s an amazing screenplay. In the introduction to the published script (Screen and Cinema, 1998), Keefe describes watching hours upon hours of American gangster films (this before the advent of convenient VHS and DVDs; Keefe watched them all in a small screening room) collected for inspiration by the producer, Barry Hanson, who wanted Keefe to transpose the gritty energy of those US movies into something uniquely British.