‘West 11’ or — Kitchen Sink Noir?

Considering ‘West 11’ (1963) was written by Willis Hall and Keith Waterhouse, whose credits include ‘Billy Lair’ (1963) and ‘A Kind of Loving’ (1962), it’s not a staggering surprise to discover that this film is firmly rooted in British kitchen sink territory. And so we follow Joe (Alfred Lynch), a disaffected young man, who mopes around disaffected Notting Hill visiting disaffected jazz bars with his disaffected girlfriend whilst talking about how disaffected everything is in his disaffected bedsit.

It’s all pretty disaffecting stuff.

And then an ex-army officer, Richard Dyce (Eric Portman), noticing how disaffected Joe is, approaches the young man with an offer: kill Dyce’s wealthy aunt. It’s the perfect crime and easy money… if Joe has the gumption to go through with it.

And that’s when we realise that maybe we’re watching a noir instead.

This shift helps keep ‘West 11’ perky, and this switch from the vibe of, say, Tony Richardson to Alfred Hitchcock is a pretty neat way of hooking our attention. Yes, nothing here is particulrly original in the slightest but the murder angle adds a welcome twist to all the well-trodden angry young man snark.

Yet despite breathing a sigh of relief that there’d be more to ‘West 11’ than simply watching an unlikeable bloke moan about an unlikeable world for 90 minutes it’s the characters, their lives, their environment and their society that’s the real pull here, and certainly more so than the somewhat forgettable murder plot.

A great example of this is Joe’s mother, wonderfully played by Kathleen Harrison. She could easily be nothing more than a throw away character, someone else for Joe to complain about, but instead she’s given genuine personality with time to show it off. Likewise with Joe’s reclusive book-worm neighbour, Mr. Gash (Finlay Currie), a stark warning of the inevitable lonely future awaiting the younger man if he doesn’t change course. And then there’s Diana Dors who steals the show as this chess board’s sultry white queen.

‘West 11’ is one of Michael Winner’s early films but anyone only familiar with Winner’s later, more workmanlike, fare might very well find themselves somewhat taken aback at the ambition and flair on display here. There’s a real sense of movement, composition, layering and depth to what we’re seeing I can only describe as truly impressive, and when you combine that with Otto Heller’s striking black and white cinematography (along with a very nice score by Stanley Black and Acker Bilk) the result is a visually and sonically immersive portrayal of Sixties London.

Not only that but this riffing on Hitchcock isn’t the first time I’ve found myself complimenting Winner for beating Brian De Palma to certain cinematic punches and frequently executing them with just as much style, Joe making his way through a packed fascist rally being a nicely handled, and worryingly relevant, demonstration of that.

“Goodness!” I thought to myself, “Next I’ll be comparing Michael Winner to Steven Spielberg again”, only for Winner to then suddenly present me with his version of the famous “Child’s-Scream-to-Jeff-Goldblum’s-Yawn-Match-Cut” from ‘The Lost World: Jurassic Park’ (1997). Sure, they’re not EXACTLY the same (there’s no parallels in terms of sound), but some of the ingredients are similar enough that next time you find yourself hailing Spielberg a genius for that particular flourish you might want to send a little love Winner’s way, too, even if both directors are indebted to Hitchcock’s ‘The 39 Steps’ (1935).

‘West 11’ isn’t a masterpiece of British Sixties cinema, but if you’ve only seen Winner’s more famous 70’s work with Bronson or Lancaster then this is really worth checking out because it’s a damn sight more inventive than his action films or Westerns.