Hell Is a City

+ discussion with season curator Ehsan Khoshbakht, and James Bell and Josephine Botting, Curators, BFI National Archive

Stanley Baker’s brooding inspector shines darkly in an existentialist police procedure drama.

  • Director

    Val Guest

  • With

    Stanley Baker, John Crawford, Billie Whitelaw, Donald Pleasence

  • UK 1960. 96min

  • 35mm

  • Certificate

    PG

In this superb Hammer-produced police procedural, Stanley Baker plays an inspector hunting a murderer while struggling with his crumbling marriage. The film maintains a strong psychological focus, unfolding at a measured pace until it accelerates towards a thrilling climax atop a building in Manchester – one of British cinema’s most exhilarating sequences. Alexander Payne described it as his major discovery of the Locarno Film Festival retrospective.

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