Breakinger A Brilliant Conflict

Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Ketrivie It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

Cristal The movie really just wants to entertain people.

robert-temple-1 Tiger Bay is the colourful and unusual name of the large bay harbour of the Welsh port of Cardiff, where this story is entirely set in the 1950s. This is the film which introduced the twelve year-old Hayley Mills to the screen. It made a huge impact at that time and has remained famous ever since, not least because it is a powerful and intense psychological thriller, with a friendship between a young girl and a grown man who has unwittingly committed a murder at its heart. From the very first instant that we see Hayley Mills staring through an iron grill in the street where she lives, with her huge expressive eyes and her sandy lashes, something happens to us. We realize that this is not an ordinary child actress we are seeing, but an apparition. No one can ever understand those ineffable personal qualities which combine to produce a human presence on screen which force everyone to watch, so that we cannot take our eyes away for a second. Hayley Mills's qualities go way beyond mere charm and have nothing to do with being cute. She embodies something, one cannot say what, but certainly it includes freshness and spontaneity and a complete lack of self-consciousness or vanity. She is heedless of how she looks, and if she furrows her brow or scrunches up her face (two of her endearing mannerisms) she does not care a jot about what this might possibly look like. As a child actress, she was the diametrical opposite of Shirley Temple, whose mother was always fussing over her before each take and just before the director would say 'Action!' she would harass her child by shouting: 'Sparkle, Shirley, sparkle!' Miss Mills's father John Mills on the other hand was very laid back and did not require any vicarious satisfaction through his child. The story is very famous in cinema history that the director J. Lee Thompson dropped by John Mills's house for lunch in the London suburb of Richmond, plagued with his problem of casting the lead child in his next film. Mills's younger daughter was playing in the back garden and lolloping around in a rather tomboyish way when she unexpectedly caught Thompson's eye and he became riveted by her rather unusual personality, which might be described as 'somewhat quirky'. In a TV portrait of him late in life, John Mills was asked by the interviewer about this incident, and he frankly described his younger daughter at that time as 'a funny little thing', and said no one had ever imagined her becoming a child actress. But it was just those indefinable qualities of being unlike other people despite looking normal that made Hayley Mills perfect for this part, and it made cinema history. She is called Hayley after an ancestor, the English writer and poet William Hayley (1745-1820), a friend of William Blake and William Cowper, author of numerous volumes and patron of the painter George Romney and others. Before her, no one ever had the first name of Hayley, and all the thousands of girls named Hayley in the world today are named after her whether they realize it or not. The film actress Hayley Atwell (born 1982), for instance, enjoys telling people that she is named after Hayley Mills. It is impossible to overestimate the cultural and social influence which Hayley Mills exerted in her career simply by existing. When this film was released, it was spotted by Walt Disney, who signed her up to play the lead in one of his most influential films, POLYANNA. Miss Mills's earnest and heedless cheerfulness, her insouciant optimism and irresistible smile, made her an instant international icon of hope that everything might really turn out all right in a difficult world. It was after this that the more cynical and world-weary of the chatterati began to refer to her as 'Little Miss Sweetness and Light', because all that shining goodness in her face was simply too much for them. And she went on and on, in film after film, radiating goodness and good cheer and inspiring hundreds of millions of people all over the world, not least the entire population of Middle America, that vast space between the two coasts inhabited by ordinary people whom the trendies of the media so utterly despise because they have such unfashionable traits as values and morals. To them, Hayley Mills might as well have been an angel come down from heaven to bring them joy, but what made this work was that she herself was entirely oblivious of the effect she was having on a large proportion of the population of the entire world, and she imagined that she was quite ordinary. Such lack of ego was, of course, the essential ingredient. She was born a good person, and in some respects the secret of her appeal is as simple as that. And, unlike Shirley Temple, Hayley Mills did not have to be told to 'sparkle', for she radiated all that sweetness and light with all the naturalness of a frolicking lamb which leaps in the sun just because it is a fine day and the grass is green. I daresay that no film actress has ever had a greater impact upon the world than Hayley Mills, not even the sultry and mysterious Greta Garbo. She became the world's tonic. You might be depressed, but if you went to see a Hayley Mills film, you would emerge convinced that everything might really turn out all right after all. And yet the character of Gillie Evans which she plays in TIGER BAY is that of a disturbed girl who is a compulsive liar, and she is not sweet at all. The German actor Horst Buchholz plays the Polish sailor with whom she becomes entangled. He learned to speak Polish for the part. The film is extremely intense and is a true classic of its time.

screenman Fans of the more recent 'Leon' will be familiar with the plot of a pubescent child infatuated by a criminal adult. In 'Tiger Bay' Hayley Mills plays just such a child who witnesses a murder and forms a similar bond with the culprit. Young Hayley had an amazing presence both in appearance and acting skill, and with her star-rated father blazing the trail you might have expected her to dominate the screen for decades. Yet, as sometimes happens, she quickly faded with adulthood.Well, here she's on top form as tom-boy par excellence. Her murderous mentor is played by a scarcely-less-juvenile Horst Buchholst. Both bring complete conviction to their roles. Cop on the case is Hayley's dad, John. The scenes in which these two spar-off, father and daughter, actor and actress, law and disorder, is mesmerising stuff. You bet they were roaring with laughter off-set. A solid support cast is led by Megs Jenkins.There's lovely location-work depicting port life at the turn of the 1960's. 'Kitchen sink' elements are authentic, too. The plot moves along at a good steady lick with lots of little twists & turns. Filming is in B&W with good use made of camera. There are many sly, noirish elements. Editing is also right on the money. Our anti-hero needs to find another sailing-berth before the inquiry net can tighten. He must be beyond the then 3-mile limit and bound for a country with which Britain has no extradition treaty. In a complete moral turnaround; we find ourselves rooting for the villain. The ending is suitably righteous.It's so nice to watch a mature movie featuring kids, instead of the gooey schmaltzfests that Hollywood turns out today.There's no particular issue I can fault with this movie, so I'm giving it 10 stars. Highly recommended.

Robert J. Maxwell Hayley Mills is really a piece of work in this film, a brazen tomboy caught in mid growth-spurt, unshaken by any circumstance. Her boyishness, even with her short hair and unisex jeans, is thoroughly undermined by her feminine features. Her blue eyes are doll-like, her eyelashes pale. Her plump lower lip has to be seen to be believed -- or rather witnessed, since whenever Mills is concentrating or squinting, it assumes idiosyncratic and sometimes frankly sensuous configurations. It's no wonder she became a Disney favorite.She's cute as hell and a good little actress too. She outshines Horst Buchholtz in some of their scenes together. As an illustration of her natural talent, watch her being interrogated by a policeman, John Mills, her father. He tells her to sit in a chair and answer his questions. She sits. He asks her questions, slowly, one at a time, but she never immediately answers because she's improvising the description of the murderer as the interview stumbles along. And, between answers, the director, J. Lee Thompson, allows her time to send her face through all sorts of spasms and contortions without ever quite overdoing it. It's an utterly charming performance -- and this is a thriller about a murderer and his diminutive confidante.Buchholtz is a Polish sailor who shoots his girlfriend to death during a fierce argument. Mills spots him and he traps her in a church attic. He can't very well kill the gangly kid, and they get to know one another. Buchholz winds up praying.That's not as bad as it sounds. It's not that kind of movie. Mills' attempts to protect Buchholz from the police are mostly comic. The climactic scene aboard a Venezuelan freighter has him giving up his freedom to save Mills' life, but that's not as bad as it sounds either.Beneath the comedy and suspense lies an interesting question about lying, sometimes called "the brother's dilemma" in psychology. What circumstances -- what features of a relationship -- justify lying to save someone else's hide? This script brings the police, the murderer, and Mills together in a final confrontation. Should she continue to lie in order for him to escape? The usual moral scenario would have her break down and confess to the police, with Buchholz carted away, a sneer on his face. But that's not what happens here.J. Lee Thompson, the director, made a couple of good, rip-roaring movies, including "Cape Fear", "The Guns of Navarone", "Ice Cold in Alex," but was more of an efficient technician than an artist. Yet he handles most of these scenes with an unexpected delicacy. Unfortunately the lighting of the first half of the film is stark and noir-like, dampening the emotional effect of the developing friendship.What we see of Cardiff, Wales, is pretty dismal -- all cold bricks and dripping water, much as I remember it from the train. It's as ugly and poor as where I grew up, and only slightly less dangerous. The movie itself is a bit too long for the material, and the director makes too much use of close ups, especially of Buchholz's shayna punim and Mill's unspoiled freshness.I have to go back to the scene in which Mills' Daddy is trying to squeeze the truth out of her about the appearance of the murderer, while she sits in the chair and grimaces. Was the murderer fair? "Fairish." Was he fat? "Fattish." Was he tall? "Tallish." I saw it tonight for the first time since its release and it still strikes me as hilarious.

spotlightne I was disappointed when I watched this film again.I saw it when I was a kid but it doesn't stand up to the test of time.The relationship between the killer and the girl just wouldn't work now in modern cinema.In this their friendship is innocent (no pun intended), but I am sure if this film was remade, Hollywood would put a much sinister slant on it. It's unavoidable in a way. She's 11 and he's early 20s.The film drags on far too much, and when all is said and done there isn't much of a story. It's a disjointed film, uneven and boring in parts.I didn't like it much and couldn't wait for it to end. The bleak surroundings and black and white print didn't help much.The acting is average. The ending unsurprising. Just 4/10.