Stephen Frears's Dirty Pretty Things: Who Wants to Be a Victim
Published August 20, 2003
In this maddening but revealing interview with IndieWire, Frears compares Dirty Pretty Things to the James Cagney gangster movie Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), which also turned then-contemporary urban ills into formulaic entertainment. But apart from Cagney's spring-loaded performance, that movie is a model of how Hollywood trashed potentially great material. The screenwriter of Dirty Pretty Things is the man who created the TV show "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," which is starting a little bit over the entertainment packaging line in the first place. But Frears bears his share of responsibility as well, as you can see in this exchange from the interview:
iW: What's the appeal exactly of American films?In Dirty Pretty Things Frears may be acting on the noble intention of conveying the plight of immigrants, but in essence he's saying that though he can imagine a better movie on the subject he didn't think he could sell one. And he blames us, the audience, for not giving us the movie he preemptively decided we wouldn't go to.Frears: People love them. They're vivid and entertaining and skillful and noisy and have pretty girls and fast cars.
iW: Doesn't sound that terrific ...
Frears: Well, that's not what they'll tell you in Hollywood. That's what people like. It's the economics.
iW: Is "Dirty Pretty" a film that crosses over and can attract a mass audience?
Frears: It seems to me that the popular form, the melodrama--that's saying, "Look, I can absolutely see that you people want to be entertained and want an exciting story."
iW: With revenge at the end.
Frears: Yes, that's good fun.
iW: What about substance and quality, rather than noise and cars?
Frears: But my film has substance. All I can tell you is that audiences like American films. And I have to be more clever to get a film noticed with all that noise going on. And you see people are struggling with that the whole time. People in England who are making films are trying to deal with that problem and finding different solutions. Rather than depending on a protectionist atmosphere from the government.
iW: The French do that.
Frears: And they make a lot of films that people don't want to see.
You can find this review and a lot besides at The Kitchen Cabinet.
Alan Dale is author of Comedy Is a Man in Trouble: Slapstick in American Movies.
- Stephen Frears's Dirty Pretty Things: Who Wants to Be a Victim
- Published: August 20, 2003
- Type:
- Section: Video
- Filed Under: Video: Art House, Video: Drama, Video: Suspense and Mystery
- Writer: Alan Dale
- Alan Dale's BC Writer page
- Alan Dale's personal site
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Comments on this articleComments
Hi,
Thanks for writing. Getting comments is the best part of reviewing.
Your guess about the turnaround makes sense, it's just that a lot (most?) of the dirt on us comes from the inside and I feel that the moviemakers treat us like children who can't be told the entire truth by making the hero purely good, as if we couldn't sympathize with an exploited immigrant worker unless he were morally without blemish. Doesn't this involve a bit of hypocrisy, as well? Are you purely good? I'm not, even though I'm not conscious of any terrible crimes. But a character like Okwe isn't even self-centered to the ordinary extent and all his moods are justified. It wouldn't matter if it were purely a romance. Galahad, Lohengrin, Shane have no flaws. But in Dirty Pretty Things the immigrant economy is treated naturalistically and the pure characters don't jibe with that treatment. (Though perhaps another writer or director could have made it work--I'm not trying to state a rule. Actually, Joel McCrea's character in Sam Peckinpah's Ride the High Country straddles chivalric romance and realism very successfully.)
Anyway, let me know what you think when you've seen the movie.
Thanks again for reading and commenting, Alan
Here's a comment: you rock for some weird professor type or something!
Hey Eric,
Thanks! I want that comment put on my tombstone. Don't forget.
Alan
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Thanks for posting this review, Alan. I haven't seen the movie yet, but it is at the top of my list. We will try to fit it in this weekend.
Of course I will form my own opinion about whether the hero is too flawless. From what you've said abput the plot, I wonder if the turn around at the end might be the writer's way of saying everyone gets some dirt on'em in this mean ole world, including Okwe. Will let you know what I think after I see Pretty, Dirty.