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If you’re doing the Film Studies FM2 unit on Producers and Audiences, you’ll be thinking about Star Power; and if you’re also following our culture theme, you may also be considering film culture and its uses of popular iconography in the marketing process. Here Film Studies teacher Graeme Scarfe looks at the ways the director of modern British Western Harry Brown has recycled and exploited past performances by one of our most iconic British actors: Michael Caine.

A lone gunman comes to the rescue of a community besieged by a gang, by picking them off one-by-one until he comes face-to-face with the head-strong leader who, finally, gets his comeuppance, after which the community is once again free of such threatening oppression.

This could be the plotline for Shane (Stevens, 1953) or Pale Rider (Eastwood, 1985) and many Hollywood-made Westerns in between. But, for the purposes of this article, it perfectly describes Britain’s most recent post-modern Western, Harry Brown (Barber, 2010). When it was released in cinemas, this directorial debut from Daniel Barber generated as much column inches about the social background and social problems as it did about the film itself. The film’s star, Michael Caine even commented, upon returning to the Elephant and Castle region of South London where a majority of the film was shot – and, incidentally where he grew up:

The fact is that we [society] are failing [our youth]. If they are brought up with violence they have no option but to join a gang – most of them join for protection, not because they are naturally violent themselves.So the film can be seen as a cautionary tale

about our inner cities and what happens when

we, as a society, create these ‘ghettos’, in very much the same way as Death Wish (Winner, 1974) purported to do. There will always be a vigilante.

But this is nothing new, as former Western icon Clint Eastwood found in 1971 when he stepped into the shoes of a legalized vigilante, one Inspector ‘Dirty’ Harry Callahan in the first of a series that ran through the Seventies and the Eighties. The argument with Callahan is that he is standing up for the moral right against the bureaucratic wrong. For example, on being confronted by the Mayor of San Francisco about his shooting of a potential rapist, his logic is both amusing yet stark in its argument of black and white:

When a naked man is chasing a woman through an alley with a butcher knife and a hard-on, I figure he isn’t out collecting for the Red Cross.Michael Caine himself of

course is no stranger to these ambiguous roles himself, Get Carter (Hodges, 1970) remains closely associated with the actor forty years on; and it is this I want to explore and discuss in the body of this article.

Playing with iconography

Clint Eastwood himself used his iconic Dirty Harry character to his advantage when making the acclaimed Gran Turino (Eastwood, 2009). When his character, Walt Kowalski growls ‘Get of my lawn’ to a group of anti-social youths who are terrorizing the neighborhood, it is hard not to see Callahan’s .44 Magnum lurking in the background. The audience are being toyed with for maximum effect, which leads right up to the chilling

and memorable volte-face of a climax when Kowalski is gunned down, unarmed. Bet ya didn’t see that comin’! It’s intertextuality alright, but so well hidden as to make it almost subliminal. The audience here is doing all the work, and Eastwood is just waiting for the right time to turn this expectation on its head.

Daniel Barber doesn’t go as far as Eastwood in turning the iconic image of the lead actor on its head, but he does go some way down the road in its exploitation.

When the film Alfie (Gilbert, 1966) was released, it did so with an unprecedented announcement: ‘Michael Caine IS Alfie’ ran

Get Caine, Us! Caine : How to Exploit Iconic Status in the Marketing of Your Film

12 MediaMagazineOnline – Culture | February 2011 | english and media centre

MMthe promotional campaign. Never before had a screen role been so inextricably linked with the actor playing it. For Caine it was to prove a springboard into movie stardom rather than a millstone of typecasting.

Now, forty-four years later, in the autumn of his career, Lionsgate spun the same line: ‘Michael Caine is Harry Brown’. Actor and Character intertwined, only this time it has more resonance.

In the Sixties Michael Caine, along with his flat-mate, actor Terence Stamp, had a reputation of being a ladies man – something he has never played down; but apart from frequently-run stories in gossip columns of the day, he was an actor relatively new on the scene. After a decade of bit-parts and walk-ons he had landed leading roles in both Zulu (Enfield, 1964) and The Ipcress File (Furie, 1965). Alfie was his third film. As an actor he had no reputation that could augur well for the theatrical and critical success of the film (although he was nominated for an Oscar),

but as a ‘playboy’…well it was clear what was going through the minds of the marketing boys. And it worked! In the publics’ mind the actor and character were one and the same, and it did neither any harm whatsoever.

Marketing Harry BrownThis is clearly the thinking with those

marketing Harry Brown, only this time they do have Caine’s considerable iconic status to play with.

Just like this first three films, Caine’s career has not been pigeon-holed either by role or genre; he is just as adept at light comedy – see the much maligned, but I think perfect, Blame It On Rio (Donen, 1984) – as he is with straight drama such as The Man Who Would Be King (Huston, 1975). But no matter how many films he makes inbetween – and let’s face it there’ve been a few – he seems to be linked not unfavourably with gritty British crime-thrillers: Get Carter, Mona Lisa (Jordan, 1986), Shiner (Irvin, 2000). He is the man directors like Guy Ritchie name-check when attempting to give credence to their own submissions to the genre and who, given his

availability, they would want to cast in their work. In Daniel Barber’s case, it’s worked out quite nicely. So let’s look at the way Caine is used in the marketing of Harry Brown.

For a start there’s the clear anchoring of the movie as a British film. The red, white and blue of the Union Jack used in the poster not only ties in with the UK’s national flag but the fact that it is in the shape of an instantly recognizable Mod target too – the Sixties = Caine. If The Beatles were the decade’s fashion template, and the Stones its musical heartbeat, The Who were the sounds from the streets of the inner-city, and the target its very own logo.

Its not the only film to play on this iconic Swinging Sixties reference. When Caine’s 1969 movie The Italian Job (Collinson) was given a theatrical re-release in 1999, that too played on the red, white and blue. In the Sixties, thanks to The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Michael Caine and others, there was nowhere cooler than Great

Britain. Those marketing Harry Brown are buying into this nostalgia, just as much as film critics who hail the actor as ‘the king of cool’. Caine is a rare beast: a genuine, bona fide British film star, and

maybe that’s what makes him so special. On top of the tricoloured target comes another

tasty piece of intertextuality: when Get Carter was first released, some promotional images framed Caine inside a target, the unwitting victim of a lone gunman (which foreshadowed the film’s bleak climax when having avenged his brother’s murder Carter is gunned down from afar). Harry Brown is similarly framed, only this time he is walking towards the audience, facing down the danger.

Then again, in yet another promotional image there is the low-angle shot of Brown looking down towards the camera.. Compare this with the now iconic shot of Carter, shotgun in hand looking down the lens. See any similarities?Without crowing about it, the film-makers are wearing their genre influence on their sleeve and using Michael Caine’s star power to their advantage. The message is clear, this is Carter for the 21st Century, a gritty no-nonsense film that pulls no punches; and an audience coming into the film with these images and these links to a modern classic will have their expectations set high. Fortunately the film doesn’t disappoint.

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Brown is unflinching, and if the resolution is simplistic: lock up the trouble-makers and all will be well. Without actually addressing the causes of the problem, it is at least satisfying in some sort of wish-fulfillment. As soon as Harry’s friend Len says:

You’ve never talked about your time in the Marines…did you ever kill anyone?we know that he will react, the quiet man will

once again find his voice. And this is the main difference between

Eastwood’s manipulation of his own iconic onscreen image, and Barber’s use of his star. Eastwood as both director and star is in control of the message he wants to send out. Kowalski’s martyrdom is in some way cleansing, suggestiing that a violent past can be redeemed (just as a director’s violent past films can). Brown’s act(s) of vigilantism, on the other hand, says quite clearly that if society has caused the problem of anti-social behaviour, then the society must solve it. The final scene of Caine walking past the subway, stopping and then walking through it is triumphant in a way the Gran Turino driving across the frame at sunset isn’t…and perhaps more British – which is in keeping with a film that has used its main star not only as its actor, but also as its link to the past.

Enduring connectionsAnd that connection with the Sixties, and

Caine in partcular, doesn’t stop there. There is even a further intertextual relationship between the titular hero of Barber’s film and yet another piece of Caine’s cinematic history.

Caine’s second film: The Ipcress File (Furie, 1965) features, in Len Deighton’s original novel at least, a nameless narrator. Clearly this would never work in film – although Daniel Craig manages to pull it off in Layer Cake (Vaughn, 2007) – so a name was sought. As Michael Caine himself explains inhis 1992 autobiography, What’s It All About?:

Saltzman [producer of the James Bond series and Ipcress] was after the antithesis of James Bond: a very ordinary bloke, someone who could mingle unnoticed in a crowd and who should have an ordinary, boring name. I suggested Harry is a pretty dull name. Now all we needed was a surname. We [Saltzman, Caine and other dinner guests] all started to go through the dullest names we could think of – Smith, Brown, Jones etc.They ended up with Harry Palmer, but it could

so easily have been Harry Brown, and in many ways, with his military past buried deep, Brown could very well be Palmer. At a stretch.

So here we have a low-budget British film (approx budget £4.3m) that cleverly uses its lead actor not simply for his Star Power in attracting an audience, but more importantly his iconic status in, lets face it, his most iconic film roles to create a deep intertextual resonance and reflect positively on the new film in its attempt to punch above its weight and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the Hollywood heavyweights at the Box Office.

Graeme Scarfe teaches Film Studies at Uckfield Community

Technology College.