Aka - Room 43
It is almost jarring to hear Eddie Constantine speaking English in this film.
He made his share of English speaking films (this was his first), but most
of those I have seen him in he is playing Lemmy Caution in French films where
he is being dubbed. Of course, here he is playing an English taxi driver
with his gruff American accent that makes very little sense. As in so many
of these English crime films, they liked slipping in an American actor and
though Constantine wasn't a star back in America he was on the Continent.
But if that was jarring, so was seeing Diana Dors as a common street prostitute.
I mean come on. She would have a line of men waiting going around the corner.
So you have to treat this film with kid gloves, but it still is fairly intriguing
in its subject matter - sex trafficking. Not that common a subject for films
from back then.
Yet it is not particularly sordid nor exploitive. It is more of a human drama
with some fisticuffs thrown in. The director Alvin Rakoff said of the film
"This was not a low budget film, this was a lowest budget film." But it looks
fine and not cheap at all with some exterior shooting and a decent cast.
Though Dors has the fourth most time on the screen, she gets top billing.
They knew who was buttering their bread. Look for a tiny appearance of Michael
Caine still doing uncredited roles as the smiling man who just got married
- I thought that was him and it is. Joan Collins is apparently in there as
well, but I didn't see her. Herbert Lom is great as the well-dressed impeccably
mannered smooth as porcelain villain with a heart of cyanide. On the camera
is Nicolas Roeg.
Marie (French actress Odile Versois) is set up by a sex trafficking ring
for a robbery and brought to England as a companion to an older wealthy lady
(Brenda de Banzie). The lady is part of the ring of course and stashed all
over this apartment building are ladies of the night including Vicki (Dors).
At the same time they set up Marie, they set up Johnny (Constantine) by wrecking
his cab and putting him into hock. Then they apply the pincers - Marie has
to leave England unless she marries a man - just for one day - and same to
Johnny to get out of hock. They meet, they marry and he falls in love. Now
it is time to force her to work - the kind where you get to meet a lot of
men. But Johnny knows the score and is a man in love and while Nick (Lom)
has a gang behind him, Johnny has the taxi drivers behind him. Dors is never
quite believable as a street working girl - high class escort perhaps - but
she dominates the screen whenever she shows up in her tight white dresses
and has a great scene towards the end of unrepentant vengeance. If you step
back it strikes you as an awful convoluted way to induce a girl from Paris
to ply the trade. There have to be easier ways.
