A Kitchen Sink with Hard (boiled) Water

When I launched this film series earlier this month, I described it as Genre Fluid; a celebration of films that refuse to conform to the usual parameters of their respective genres.

IMAGE: The two brothers face each other in a scene from "Suture".

Ultimately, genres are available in a wide variety of... fluids, and we will be sampling an awful lot of them before this series is over. Westerns, Rom-Coms, Thrillers, Space Operas, Sword & Sorcery... Don't be surprised if we see practically everything but the kitchen sink.

IMAGE: A 1950s housewife faces a sink full of dirty dishes.

In fact, now that I mention it, we're getting the "Kitchen Sink" as well.

IMAGE: Albert Finney in "Gumshoe"

Kitchen Sink Realism is a specific branch of British drama that flourished in the 1950s and 60s and was notable for its focus on the drab, the mundane and the everyday. Its protagonists were typically working class figures, often living in financially constrained circumstances in decidedly non-affluent parts of the country. The characters in Kitchen Sink dramas were were not changing the world, battling Evil or fighting International Communism; they were just trying to make it from one day to the next; paying their bills, caring for their families and (hopefully) not ending up homeless. Some were more successful than others.

IMAGE: A promotional image from "EastEnders".
EastEnders wouldn't exist without the "Kitchen Sink" tradition.


The modern British Soap Opera has its roots in the Kitchen Sink dramas of the mid-20th Century; a sure sign that the Kitchen Sink has unambiguously become a genre a genre unto itself.

IMAGE: The ultra-glamourous cast of "Dynasty"
American Soap Operas feature no Kitchen Sinks; not even of any kind

So; how can a Kitchen Sink be fluid?

Let's face it; the only fluid that has any business coming out of a kitchen sink is tap water. And if it's a British Kitchen Sink, it's going to be hard water.

Or in this case, hard-boiled.

IMAGE: Billy Whitelaw calmly boils a kettle while Albert Finney wields a gun at her, in a scene from "Gumshoe".
My god; that might very well be the most laboured verbal image I have ever constructed; I apologise...



IMAGE: The Film poster for "Gumshoe".


Gumshoe is usually described as a pastiche/parody of the hard-boiled crime fiction of (American) writers such as Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain, and it is certainly peppered with knowing references and tributes to The Big Sleep, The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man (amongst others).

But with all due respect to... well... everyone, I think this gets the film exactly backwards.

Gumshoe tells the story of Eddie Ginley (Albert Finney) a barely-employed bingo-caller who ekes out a living in working-class Liverpool while immersing himself in hard-boiled detective fiction of the 30s and 40s.

IMAGE: Albert Finney (dressed in mackintosh and fedora) sips a cup of tea in a scene from "Gumshoe"


As a little birthday present to himself, he decides to run an advert in the local paper advertising his services as a private detective (a "gumshoe"). Then someone actually decides to hire him.

IMAGE: The "Sam Spade" personal ad, as scene in the film "Gumshoe".

Parody detective movies are a dime a dozen. If Gumshoe were merely that, it would have been lost in the crowd decades ago.

IMAGE: Woody Allen meets the ghost of Humphrey Bogart in a scene from "Play It Again, Sam".

What makes this film unusual is that it's actually a Kitchen Sink drama about a guy who is only Sam Spade in his own head.

IMAGE: Albert Finney in "Gumshoe".

Eddie may wander around as if he's Humphrey Bogart, but the world he inhabits is 1970s Liverpool with its bingo halls, job centres and dockyards. 

IMAGE: Men on the dole wait in the unemployment office, in a scene from "Gumshoe".

Ironically, that makes it the perfect setting for a true "noir" story.

IMAGE: Albert Finney wields his gun, in a scene from "Gumshoe".

In true "noir" tradition, Eddie gradually realises that he has been dragged into the middle of something genuinely sordid. And nothing is quite what it seems to be. But this is Liverpool, and there are no swanky nightspots or sexy chanteuses. There's just the bingo hall and his brother's wife.

IMAGE: Albert Finney and Billie Whitelaw, in a scene from "Gumshoe".

This genre is well and truly fluid.

IMAGE: Albert Finney charms a pretty receptionist, in a scene from "Gumshoe".

We will screen Gumshoe at 7.30pm on Thursday, the 3rd of October at the Victoria Park Baptist Church.

IMAGE: Albert Finney and a very young Maureen Lipman in a scene from "Gumshoe".

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