Tiger Bay (1959)

Directed by

J. Lee Thompson

Genre

drama film, crime film, thriller film

Country

United Kingdom

Runtime

1h 45m

Rated

16

Rating

7.2 of 10 from 57 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A young Polish sailor kills a woman in a fit of jealousy and goes on the run. A little girl witnesses the murder and becomes the key witness for the police investigation. The film follows the complicated bond that forms between the girl and the sailor as she helps him hide.

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What happens

Tiger Bay is a 1959 British crime drama film directed by J. Lee Thompson. It stars John Mills as a police superintendent investigating a murder; his real-life daughter Hayley Mills, in her first major film role, as a girl who witnesses the murder; and Horst Buchholz as a young sailor who commits the murder in a moment of passion. The title refers to the Tiger Bay district of Cardiff, where much of the film was shot. The film features many authentic scenes of the children's street culture and the black street culture of the time, along with many dockside shots and scenes in real pubs and the surrounding countryside. Unusually, the overall ambience of the film is one of sympathy towards the killer, seeing him as a basically good person, and victim of circumstance. As such, the film marks a vital transitional moment in the move towards the British New Wave cinema exemplified a few years later by A Taste of Honey. Tiger Bay was released by Rank Film Distributors in March 1959. It received widely positive reviews from critics, and was a commercial success, helping to launch a then-11-year-old Hayley Mills's acting career. The film was nominated for four BAFTA Awards, including Best Film and Outstanding British Film, with Mills winning Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Roles. At the 9th Berlin International Film Festival, the film was nominated for the Golden Bear and Mills received a Special Mention for her performance. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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