Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: John Lemont
Starring: Sean Connery, Herbert Lom, Yvonne Romain, John
Gregson, Alfred Marks
Long before he played an Irish cop with a Scottish accent in
The Untouchables, Sean Connery played an Irish criminal with a Scottish accent
in director John Lemont's 1961 London gangland thriller
The Frightened City. The movie also features Czech born Herbert Lom playing a
Russian and Londoner Yvonne Romain as a French-Algerian with
Russian parents.
Dodgy accents aside, it’s the cast that enlivens what is otherwise a
rickety gangster movie. Lom is at his slimy best as Waldo Zhernikov, a
White Russian émigré who takes mustachioed mob boss Harry Foulcher (Alfred Marks, laying the groundwork for Only Fools and Horses' resident spiv Boycie) under his wing. The ambitious Zhernikov has a
plan to unite London's six most powerful gangs into an all-controlling
syndicate that can dominate the city's protection rackets. Despite some
objections by one boss, Alf Peters (David Davies), a deal is
struck.
Brought in to head up the coercion of London's shopkeepers, nightclub
owners and restaurateurs is Irish cat burglar Paddy Damion (Connery),
who combines his hulking physical frame with some smooth talk. Said
attributes are acknowledged not just by his marks but by nightclub
performer Anya (Romain), who happens to be the squeeze of Zhernikov.
Meanwhile, all of this is being quietly observed by Scotland Yard
Detective Inspector Sayers (John Gregson), waiting for the right
moment to pounce and break up the racket.
Watching Connery here, it's easy to see why he caught the eye of Cubby
Broccoli to assume the role of 007 the following year. As Damion he
combines physical threat with seductive animal magnetism. Like Bond,
Damion treats women as disposable toys, happily seducing Anya at a party
under the nose of his girlfriend (Olive McFarland). Lom and
Romain are so convincing in their somewhat stock roles that you wonder
why they never found themselves playing a Bond villain and Bond girl
respectively. A supporting cast that looks like they were hauled out of
an East End boozer at closing time adds some authentic colour to
supplement the marquee appeal of the three leads.
The Frightened City never quite makes enough of its
characters however. It's too focused on its uninspired plot, which plays
like a London reworking of a '30s Warner Bros gangster movie. Lom gets
some fun condescending lines as the sophisticated Slavic toff looking
down his nose at the cockney oiks he's forced to ally himself with, but
otherwise the dialogue is functional at best, preachy at worst. The
scenes in Scotland Yard, in which various detectives bemoan how they're
hamstrung by the law, play like they belong in one of those old G-Men
propaganda shorts.
Lemont's film arrived amid a wave of British noirs that saw cops
chasing villains through the post war rubble of urban England, but aside
from giving Connery a rehearsal for his signature role, it doesn't offer
much to stand out from its crime thriller contemporaries.
