Notes

At the end of the film, Finney tears up his recently signed contract with Cosmo, and suggests that Mr Cosmo will be going home as ‘things haven’t worked out here’. Now while this may, in one sense, be true of the narrative of Stormy Monday, as it was, in a different way, for both Tommy Swann and Harry Fabian, the very texture of the film undermines this judgement. This is partly because of the use of Hollywood stars. Although Kate may refuse a lift with Cosmo, and thus leaves his space at the end of the film, she is not really integrated into local space-Melanie Griffith is, in her stardom, somehow implausible as mate for local boy Brendan. Similarly, Tommy Lee Jones (Cosmo), with a performance of controlled energy, is much more plausible as a villain than Sting (Finney). And there are narrative troubles too. Even though Finney, the nominal victor here, chose to celebrate Newcastle’s America Week with Polish Free Jazz, Andrej, the band leader has been killed, while Brendan, the good guy, has an unacknowledged murder on his hands. Unlike It Always Rains on Sunday, where there is still ‘haddock for breakfast’, the street and a long shot of a sheet of newspaper blowing at the gated entrance to the tube to return to, or Night and the City, where Harry finally sees the error of his ways and begs not to be indulged, telling Mary, ‘Don’t be kind to me’, before trying finally to provide for her through his death, there is nowhere to return to at the end of Stormy Monday. Although Cosmo, despite his recognition that it is not appropriate to ‘go round acting like Al Capone’, may be too American a villain to be permitted to actually buy the quayside, in a sense, in a movie in thrall to the Hollywood cinema and the Blues, it is already his.