Tiger Bay (1959 film)

Tiger Bay
Directed by	J. Lee Thompson
Produced by	John Hawkesworth
Written by	John Hawkesworth Shelley Smith Noël Calef (short story)
Starring	John Mills Horst Buchholz Hayley Mills
Music by	Laurie Johnson
Cinematography	Eric Cross
Edited by	Sidney Hayers
Production company	Independent Artists (Julian Wintle, Leslie Parkyn)
Distributed by	Rank Organisation
Release date	March 1959
Running time	103 minutes
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English

Tiger Bay is a 1959 British crime drama film based on the short story "Rodolphe et le Revolver" by Noel Calef. It was directed by J. Lee Thompson, produced by John Hawkesworth, and co-written by John Hawkesworth and Shelley Smith (pseudonym of Nancy Hermione Bodington). It stars John Mills as a police superintendent investigating a murder; his real life daughter Hayley Mills, in her first major film role, as a girl who witnesses the murder; and Horst Buchholz as a young sailor who commits the murder in a moment of passion.

The film was shot mostly on location in the Tiger Bay district of Cardiff, at Newport Transporter Bridge in Newport (12 miles from Cardiff) and at Avonmouth Docks in Bristol. It features many authentic scenes of the children's street culture and the black street culture of the time, along with many dockside shots and scenes in real pubs and the surrounding countryside. It marks a vital transitional moment in the move towards the British New Wave cinema exemplified a few years later by A Taste of Honey.

In Cardiff, a young Polish sailor named Bronislav Korchinsky (Horst Buchholz) returns from his latest voyage to visit his girlfriend Anya (Yvonne Mitchell). After he finds a woman named Christine (Shari) living in her apartment, the landlord tells him that he evicted Anya and gives him her new address, which is also the home of a young girl named Gillie Evans (Hayley Mills), an orphaned tomboy who lives with her Aunt. Gillie's angelic face hides the fact that she is a habitual liar. She dearly wants a cap gun so she can play "Cowboys and Indians" with the boys in her neighbourhood. Korchinsky arrives shortly after she gets into a fight; she begins to like him as she leads him to her apartment building.