Morelia International Film Festival

Before moving into fiction features with Get Carter, Hodges worked in television, producing and directing programmes on current affairs and politics for the World in Action series and on the arts for the Tempo strand; filmmakers covered for the latter included Orson Welles, Jean-Luc Godard and Jacques Tati. But he was also a great fan of crime thrillers, and in 1969 he wrote, produced and directed a one-off film for television entitled Suspect. After Rumour (1970), a second, rather more experimental drama (centred, like Croupier, on a writer), Hodges hit paydirt with his first theatrical feature, Michael Caine’s Jack Carter becoming one of the most genuinely iconic characters ever to have appeared in a British film.

Already in that film there could be found certain motifs and stylistic hallmarks that would recur throughout his career. The use of genre as a vehicle for detailed character study; the acute alertness to environment, with a film’s milieu serving as a reflection not only of the protagonist’s state of mind but also of the social and political dimensions of the world he inhabits; the refusal to romanticise the protagonist and his actions; the sad but unsentimental awareness of life’s bitter ironies, coupled with an irrepressibly mordant sense of dark-hued humour. These have remained constants in Hodges’ work to this day; what has changed, arguably, is his mode of expression. Even in the early days, Hodges was never a director given to redundant and flashy displays of virtuoso style, but in recent films he has pared back his use of cinematic language, in terms of imagery, editing and narrative, to focus more and more on essentials. Profoundly alert to the fact that simplicity of expression need not preclude complexity and sophistication of nuanced meaning –Hodges has often spoken of his admiration for filmmakers like Jean Vigo, Abbas Kiarostami and the Taviani brothers– Hodges is still seeking out ever more eloquent ways of communicating, clearly and directly, his very distinctive vision of the human condition.

by Geoff Andrew