The Regions

Abstract

The treatment of non-metropolitan Britain may be mapped out in the cinema via a shift to the regions over the years, often (in the process) taking in aspects of British life marginalised by more mainstream British movies: such aspects included the contrast of Southern privilege with Northern joblessness, the breeding grounds of crime-ridden housing estates, a committed treatment of racism and the ideological distance of regional coppers from the London establishment. Needless to say, all of these elements were to be discerned in non-genre fare, but the presence of such themes was assured in crime cinema by one simple expedient: the need to provide a useful plot engine. This is not to say that such elements were mere narrative imperatives; the filmmakers who addressed such issues frequently took on board their more serious aspects along with any usefulness they presented in terms of in generating conflict. In fact, the level of sophistication in addressing these areas was more often to be found in genre product than in more overtly socially conscious fare. And filmic crime in British society was illuminated by a marked movement away from the most favoured location, London, to the provinces; the cinema’s picaresque journeys around the island proved fruitful indeed, with the specific characteristic of individual cities used in creative fashion.