Good-Time Girl

In one of her earliest roles young teen Diana Dors is being given a lecture by social worker Flora Robson on the evils of wilful disobedience to her parents. Flora decides to best make her point by example and she chooses to tell Diana the story of Jean Kent and her downward spiral from when she started out as a teen delinquent just like Dors.

It begins innocently enough, Kent has a job in a pawnshop and she borrows some of the jewelry to wear on a date. The owner catches her and threatens to report her to the police. But he'll forget it with a quick roll in the hay. She goes home and dad whales the tar out of her. After that it's a lot of poor choices combined with being in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people.

Kent does a fine job even though she's 27 years old as the troubled young post war British girl. Along the way she meets up with playboy Dennis Price, club owner Herbert Lom, hood Peter Glenville, and finally deserter American soldier Bonar Colleano who puts the final touch to a short but violent criminal career.

A good ensemble cast backs Kent. But the story is about her and she's memorable in her part.

Good-Time Girl is directed by David MacDonald and collectively adapted to screenplay by Muriel Box, Sydney Box and Ted Willis from the novel Night Darkens the Street written by Arthur La Bern. It stars Jean Kent, Dennis Price, Herbert Lom, Bonar Collleano, Peter Glenville, Flora Robson and Jill Balcon. Music is by Lambert Williamson and Clifton Parker, and cinematography is by Stephen Dade.

This is the story of Gwen Rawlings (Kent), a 16 year old British girl who ran away from home and met trouble around every corner she turned...

The under represented genre of film dealing with juvenile female delinquency has always been a tricky subject for film makers to tackle, even more so back in the day as it were. Here in 1948 is one of the best of its kind, and this even after the BBFC enforced some tone downs of violent scenes and requested that a moral message framing device open and close the story. It's even thought that the Government of the time got involved, such is the wariness of how authority dealt with a troubled female teenager.

The whole film is relentlessly bleak, even as young Gwen strides out with determination and stoic strength, her ebullience infectious, there's sadness or tragedy about to enter the fray. Her whole life spins out of control the moment she is caught returning a brooch she borrowed from the Pawn Shop where she works. She had been out dancing the night before and wanted to look smart, so she took the brooch thinking nobody would mind as long as it was put back the next day, but her boss catches her returning it and isn't as understanding as she had hoped. In fact he is prepared to turn the other cheek in return for sexual favours! To which she promptly says no and slaps him one. From this point on Gwen's life slips into a vortex of misery and disaster.

After a savage beating by her father, who is incensed about her "theft" and sacking from the Pawn Shop; which is filmed skillfully by MacDonald who fades the scene to black, she runs away to start a new life, a 16 year old girl alone in the big city. She seems savvy enough, but she is quickly duped by a fellow lodger at her boardings (Glenville on wonderfully spiv oily form) and even though she lands a hat-check job at Max Vine's (Lom) nightclub, things quickly turn sour. Either by bad luck, bad judgement or just being around bad people, Gwen is on course to be wrongly sent to an Approved School, which is basically a euphemism for Girls Borstal it seems! The only bright spot in her life is Michael "Red" Farrell (Price), a genuinely kind man but one who is also married.

While there at the "school" Gwen goes through metamorphism and turns into a warrior bad girl, a plot line that John Cromwell's 1950 film Caged would follow. She befriends the tough cookie "mommy" inmate, played by Daniel Day-Lewis' mom, Jill Balcon, and before you know it she is the hard nut who thinks of nothing to bullying other girls and escaping at the first chance she gets. Now she's a fully fledge escapee, a hardened hard drinker and smoker, sexually matured and venturing still further down life's dark alleyways. And worse is to come, because fate dictates that she again will fall in with the wrong people, but willingly so this time, until finally fate deals its fatal blow, a coup de grace that stuns with the bitterest of ironies.

Cast are excellent, with Kent a revelation playing a girl ten years younger than her actual age. Direction is smart and brisk, while Dade's photography is always in the realm of film noir, with perpetual shadows and darkened streets, smoky clubs and depressingly foreboding institutions lighted accordingly. The message of the movie is a bit hazy, is Gwen's downfall the product of her torrid home life? A failure of the authorities to get her the help she needed? Or is it that Post War British Society had changed its outlook and was now looking after number one? Either way, Good-Time Girl is a biting bit of British noir, thrusting the female lead into a world where she is abused and used by those around her, harassed at regular intervals, and of course guided by that old devil of film noir, the vagaries of fate. 8.5/10

Good Time Girl (1948)

This movie has so many turns and developments it's hard to remember everything by the time you get to the sensational terrible end. A girl leaves home to escape her father's beatings and one thing leads to another down the line. It's post-war England, and there are fun echoes of similar post-war American movies, complete with thugs and nightclubs and G.I.s on the lam.

This leading actress Jean Kent starts off seeming a little strained, and you should make sure you give the movie a chance. It only gets better as it goes. It never quite strains credibility even though the events gets pretty unsavory. The photography, much of it at night, is vivid and fluid, the acting generally excellent, and the strength of ideas is wonderful.

This really is a harrowing tale of social mis-steps all along. It's meant to be a cautionary tale, too. Literally. It's all told in a flashback to another young woman who is about to repeat the fate of the main character. Kent turns out to be pretty amazing in this film, ranging through several phases of her young life on camera--from innocent girl to hardened juvenile to a kind of moll without a gang.

I liked it a lot.

The thought that people like Jimmy Rosso exist makes my skin crawl. While the movie was pretty good, I did find one glaring plot hole. This was during the hearing in juvenile court. It came down to he said, she said. She said that Jimmy had put her up to pawning the jewelry, and he said she had asked him to. This leaves reasonable doubt. The tie-breaker was the fact that she had used her own name when pawning the jewelry, which is consistent with innocence.

Michael Farrell's testimony was disregarded in its entirety when he disclosed that he had sheltered the girl for the night. The magistrate took the word of the oily Jimmy Rosso over the word of the accused and that of Michael Farrell, who had a job and a flat, as opposed to Rosso, who had nothing, and was implicated in a slashing.

Hard to believe it was like that, but I imagine it was.

Jean Kent ("Gwen") is at the top of her game in this fast moving drama. After what can only be described as a violent childhood, a period in borstal and getting sacked from her job in a jewellery shop, she has a little too much to drink one evening, drives home and accidentally collides with a policeman! Desperate to avoid the law, she hooks up with deserting American soldier - "Mallone" (Bonar Colleano) and shortly afterwards they are becoming the petty-thievery bane of the lives of just about everyone. It's told by way of a sort of optimistically redemptive series of flashbacks as another young woman "Lyla" (Diana Dors) is regaled with this tale of her flawed life - largely in the hope that it will dissuade her from taking the same path. Each episode, if you like, of her life seems to have had a bad influence that has led her to behave as she has, and none more pernicious that the magistrate "Miss Thorpe" (Flora Robson) who epitomises the role of an uncaring woman expertly. We've also got dodgy nightclub owner Herbert Lom who would sell his own mother, and her untrustworthy house-mate "Rosso" (Peter Glenville) - all of whom take considerable responsibility for the moulding of this young woman. Indeed, it is only really "Red" (Dennis Price) who has had anything like a benign influence on her life. The story is bleak, no other word for it, and at times that makes the whole thing a little relentless to watch - but for Kent and Robson, it is well worth watching for the performances from these two ladies alone.