DB7

EastEnders - but not as we know it

Matthew Reisz
Friday September 15, 2006
The Guardian

A Kid for Two Farthings

A pigeon takes off from the familiar tourist London of Trafalgar Square, flies down Fleet Street and lands on St Paul's Cathedral. Then we're suddenly looking down on the teeming street market at Petticoat Lane as the bird alights on a pub called The Unicorn. The Jewish East End attracted curious, censorious and sentimental writers almost as soon as the Jews started arriving in the 1880s, but Carol Reed's 1955 film A Kid for Two Farthings - showing this weekend at the NFT - is one of the few movies set in the area. And although it was scripted by Wolf Mankowitz, who was born in Bethnal Green, one can't help feeling the director has rather flown off course.

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Everything is drenched in lively, but obvious, local colour. Much of the action takes place in the market or at the gym, amid the wide boys, wrestling promoters and street traders scraping at chickens or yelling out to customers things like, "You've heard of Christian Dior? I'm the Yiddische Dior!" A turbaned salesman with revolving crystal ball mans a stall just next to the gents talking up his "perfumes of the Orient": "One bottle make your girlfriend very friendly!" A recurring gag features an Orthodox Jew pushing a gramophone along on a pram, and permanently engrossed in a book.

The plot centres around a tailor's workshop where the world-weary Mr Kandinsky (David Kossoff) dreams of acquiring a steam press. One of his under-pressers, Sam, is a muscle-man who dreams of becoming Mr World but decides to take up wrestling so he can buy a ring for his newly platinum-blonde fiancée (Diana Dors). She in turn dreams of a bathroom like a Lyons Corner House.

So what is to be done about all these dreams? Kandinsky keeps a kindly eye on Joanna (Celia Johnson), whose husband is seeking his fortune in South Africa, and her son Joe (Jonathan Ashmore). And it's here the film goes badly wrong. The soulful Kandinsky is the ultimate Jewish cliche, offering folksy wisdom in comically broken English ("From a cow's ear, who can make silver lining?"). He teaches Joe about unicorns, the mythical beasts that can make wishes come true. So, when the boy buys a single-horned kid goat in the market, he is convinced all their troubles are over. Posh Celia Johnson playing working-class is pretty hard to take, but Ashmore is the ultimate plummy stage-school brat - about as plausible as a unicorn on the streets of the East End.

Playwrights such as Arnold Wesker and Bernard Kops managed to extract rich and complex family dramas from the Jewish East End, but British cinema has been far less successful than its American counterpart in bringing this slice of immigrant history to the screen. Perhaps demographics meant no one ever believed there was an audience for such "exotic" subject matter and the many Jews in the business didn't want to become typecast or ghetto-ised.

Things have changed to the extent that there are now Anglo-Jewish romantic comedies like Richard Cantor's Suzie Gold (2004). What is depressing, though, is that recent films set in the past, such as Paul Morrison's Wondrous Oblivion (2003) and Paul Weiland's forthcoming Sixty-Six (about a boy whose barmitzvah coincides with England's victory in the World Cup) offer a picture of Jewish family life at least as stereotypical as Reed's.

But, strangely enough, the stereotype is almost the exact opposite. Instead of the vibrant vulgarity of the East End, we now get stories set among respectable, joyless, narrow-minded suburban Jews who seem determined to miss out on the new possibilities of a changing Britain - though, of course, they get to learn the error of their ways. The result is utterly cheerless. A Kid for Two Farthings has many faults, but at least it has a bit of energy.

· Matthew Reisz is editor of the Jewish Quarterly. A Kid for Two Farthings is shown on Sunday at the National Film Theatre as part of its Carol Reed season. Box office: 020-7928 3232

Ealingfilmfan

Excellent off beat film, have it on video, taped off TV three or four years ago, first saw it in the mid sixties and was pleased when it came round again......

Recommended.........

"Just room for one inside sir"

stevie boy

I have always liked this film. I particularly liked Celia Johnson in this role, it was a little of beat for her, but she made it work. Kossoff was very good also as was the muscleman boyfriend. Joe Robinson.

hankoler

I thought PRIMO CARNERA was miscast though.

stevie boy

well he wasn't the best actor in that film I grant you

oxfam1uk

This is a very "cute" film, very typical of the 1950s, but with fantastic colour photography.

British working-class lives (particularly "immigrant" families) are presented in a very sugary and idealised way. There is none of the harshness that must have been experienced by real Londoners. When I first saw this film, I was expecting some sort of twist at the end, a return to reality or something. But the moviemakers preferred to stick with their fantasy.

A very enjoyable film, but maybe the UK equivalent of John Ford's "The Quiet Man"! This is how Americans would like to believe ordinary Brits live !