23 Facts About Get Carter

Get Carter is a 1971 British crime film written and directed by Mike Hodges in his directorial debut and starring Michael Caine, Ian Hendry, John Osborne, Britt Ekland and Bryan Mosley.

Get Carter eventually garnered a cult following, and further endorsements from directors such as Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie led to the film being critically re-evaluated, with its depiction of class structure and life in 1970s Britain and Roy Budd's minimalist jazz score receiving considerable praise.

In 1999, Get Carter was ranked 16th on the BFI Top 100 British films of the 20th century; five years later, a survey of British film critics in Total Film magazine chose it as the greatest British film.

Newcastle-born gangster Jack Get Carter has lived in London for years in the employ of organised crime bosses Gerald and Sid Fletcher.

Get Carter's bosses warn him not to stir up trouble, as they are friendly with the Newcastle mob.

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Get Carter is rescued by Glenda, who takes him in her sports car to meet Brumby at his new restaurant development at the top of a multi-storey car park.

Get Carter tells him the film was Kinnear's, and that she thinks Doreen was pulled into the production by Eric.

Get Carter did not employ a traditional noir technique of using a voiceover to expose the character's inner feelings.

Get Carter dispensed with flashbacks to Carter's youth featured in the novel which explored his relationship with his brother Frank, streamlining the plot to a linear narrative spanning a single weekend.

Immediate consequence was the loss of the insights into Get Carter's motivations provided by his memories of boyhood and his relationships with brother Frank and delinquent gang leader Albert Swift.

Hodges' decision to kill off Get Carter was initially protested by MGM executives, as they wanted the character to survive in the event that the film proved successful enough to warrant a sequel.

Get Carter waited hours until the sun began setting to capture the overcast shadowy lighting seen in the film.

Get Carter gave Hodges multiple possibilities of how the sound could be dubbed, and explored every angle.

Get Carter is depicted wearing a gaudy floral jacket, as opposed to the dark raincoat and mohair suit he wears in the film.

Jonny Trunk of Trunk Records—a long-time aficionado of the film and its history—has observed that the floral pattern of Get Carter's jacket is taken from the distinctive pillow and matching sheet design from the bed in the scene where Britt Ekland writhes naked whilst on the phone to Jack.

Get Carter thought the general stance of British critics "was to admire the film's power and professionalism while condemning its amorality and excessive violence".

Get Carter found Carter's motivations were inconsistent, either being an avenging angel or an "authentic post-permissive anti-hero, revelling in the casual sadism".

Get Carter noticed a substantial increase in women voting on the film in the eight months leading up to April 2002.

Get Carter was a financial success, and according to Steve Chibnall its box office takings were "very respectable".

In 1999, Get Carter was ranked 16th on the BFI Top 100 British films of the 20th century; five years later, a survey of British film critics in Total Film magazine chose it as the greatest British film of all time.

Get Carter's son brought him a DVD of the film back from Hong Kong and he tried to watch it, but the region format was incompatible "so we put it in the dustbin".

Shane Meadows' film Dead Man's Shoes has drawn comparisons to Get Carter, being similarly a revenge gangster story set around a provincial English town.

Portishead's Adrian Utley explained that they found the music to Get Carter inspiring as "it was done quickly and cheaply with only a few instruments, and it had to be intensely creative to disguise its limitations".