Any time I see a movie or show with Halley Mills, my thoughts immediately go back to this movie. I saw it a long, long time ago, but the impact of her performance never fades. Other reviewers have summarized the story, so I will not bother. I simply want to be counted among those who feel this film is worth any trouble you may have to go through to find and watch it.

Tiger Bay is the colourful and unusual name of the large bay harbour of the Welsh port of Cardiff, where this story is entirely set in the 1950s. This is the film which introduced the twelve year-old Hayley Mills to the screen. It made a huge impact at that time and has remained famous ever since, not least because it is a powerful and intense psychological thriller, with a friendship between a young girl and a grown man who has unwittingly committed a murder at its heart. From the very first instant that we see Hayley Mills staring through an iron grill in the street where she lives, with her huge expressive eyes and her sandy lashes, something happens to us. We realize that this is not an ordinary child actress we are seeing, but an apparition. No one can ever understand those ineffable personal qualities which combine to produce a human presence on screen which force everyone to watch, so that we cannot take our eyes away for a second. Hayley Mills's qualities go way beyond mere charm and have nothing to do with being cute. She embodies something, one cannot say what, but certainly it includes freshness and spontaneity and a complete lack of self-consciousness or vanity. She is heedless of how she looks, and if she furrows her brow or scrunches up her face (two of her endearing mannerisms) she does not care a jot about what this might possibly look like. As a child actress, she was the diametrical opposite of Shirley Temple, whose mother was always fussing over her before each take and just before the director would say 'Action!' she would harass her child by shouting: 'Sparkle, Shirley, sparkle!' Miss Mills's father John Mills on the other hand was very laid back and did not require any vicarious satisfaction through his child. The story is very famous in cinema history that the director J. Lee Thompson dropped by John Mills's house for lunch in the London suburb of Richmond, plagued with his problem of casting the lead child in his next film. Mills's younger daughter was playing in the back garden and lolloping around in a rather tomboyish way when she unexpectedly caught Thompson's eye and he became riveted by her rather unusual personality, which might be described as 'somewhat quirky'. In a TV portrait of him late in life, John Mills was asked by the interviewer about this incident, and he frankly described his younger daughter at that time as 'a funny little thing', and said no one had ever imagined her becoming a child actress. But it was just those indefinable qualities of being unlike other people despite looking normal that made Hayley Mills perfect for this part, and it made cinema history. She is called Hayley after an ancestor, the English writer and poet William Hayley (1745-1820), a friend of William Blake and William Cowper, author of numerous volumes and patron of the painter George Romney and others. Before her, no one ever had the first name of Hayley, and all the thousands of girls named Hayley in the world today are named after her whether they realize it or not. The film actress Hayley Atwell (born 1982), for instance, enjoys telling people that she is named after Hayley Mills. It is impossible to overestimate the cultural and social influence which Hayley Mills exerted in her career simply by existing. When this film was released, it was spotted by Walt Disney, who signed her up to play the lead in one of his most influential films, POLYANNA. Miss Mills's earnest and heedless cheerfulness, her insouciant optimism and irresistible smile, made her an instant international icon of hope that everything might really turn out all right in a difficult world. It was after this that the more cynical and world-weary of the chatterati began to refer to her as 'Little Miss Sweetness and Light', because all that shining goodness in her face was simply too much for them. And she went on and on, in film after film, radiating goodness and good cheer and inspiring hundreds of millions of people all over the world, not least the entire population of Middle America, that vast space between the two coasts inhabited by ordinary people whom the trendies of the media so utterly despise because they have such unfashionable traits as values and morals. To them, Hayley Mills might as well have been an angel come down from heaven to bring them joy, but what made this work was that she herself was entirely oblivious of the effect she was having on a large proportion of the population of the entire world, and she imagined that she was quite ordinary. Such lack of ego was, of course, the essential ingredient. She was born a good person, and in some respects the secret of her appeal is as simple as that. And, unlike Shirley Temple, Hayley Mills did not have to be told to 'sparkle', for she radiated all that sweetness and light with all the naturalness of a frolicking lamb which leaps in the sun just because it is a fine day and the grass is green. I daresay that no film actress has ever had a greater impact upon the world than Hayley Mills, not even the sultry and mysterious Greta Garbo. She became the world's tonic. You might be depressed, but if you went to see a Hayley Mills film, you would emerge convinced that everything might really turn out all right after all. And yet the character of Gillie Evans which she plays in TIGER BAY is that of a disturbed girl who is a compulsive liar, and she is not sweet at all. The German actor Horst Buchholz plays the Polish sailor with whom she becomes entangled. He learned to speak Polish for the part. The film is extremely intense and is a true classic of its time.

'Tiger Bay' is undeniably an original film. But even the most original films take inspiration from other films to some degree. That is impossible to avoid. Even if only in mere details. I'd say that the inspiration for 'Tiger Bay' came directly from one of the finest movies ever: 'The Window' (1949). At least in both a child witnesses a murder.John Mills, a honorable actor, stars in this but the great surprise is his daughter, the no less famous Hayley Mills. This was her acting debut, before her Disney days. She had no acting experience before, which is almost too difficult to believe, considering her brightness. Horst Buchholz is great too.Hayley Mills plays Gillie, a tomboy. Despite that and her boy-like hair, she's utterly cute. Ironically she looks innocent yet she's not all that innocent. In fact, she is wayward and has the habit of lying. Through the mail slot, Gillie witnesses a murder committed by a young polish sailor (played by Horst Buchholz).There are many authentic scenes with children playing in the streets, settings of docks and other stuff and shots of docks filmed in great angles.The whole church sequence, from when Gillie sings in her choir until she is chased by the criminal into the attic (it's all dark and she's alone with him) and confesses what she saw is very good and well-done. It's a tense and suspenseful scene. The film is generally quite good until well beyond that. Later on, it's still good enough but not as good. The ending sort of redeems itself, thanks to its greatness.

Like a lot of people, I suppose, I was familiar with young Hayley Mills through her Disney films of the early to mid-60s. It's somewhat of a shame that she was shuffled into less challenging child-oriented fare when she offered such a fascinating performance in this, her very first film. I was pleased to find a copy of it, especially being that the vast majority of her early non-Disney pictures are quite rare if not forgotten altogether.Although it was Mills that brought "Tiger Bay" to my attention, it has much more to offer than that. J Lee Thompson, whose greatest and most known achievement was "Cape Fear", handles the direction of this film with a kind of grace and style uncommon to 1959. There are things that place it squarely in the period - the soundtrack, for one - but it has a very free, alive feeling that overcomes convention. There is a lot of on-location shooting, and the black & white cinematography is both realistic and very engaging.The other actors are all good, though somewhat on the over-the-top side at times. I liked Horst Buchholz (who I'd seen before, but never noticed). He plays the role of the spurned lover quite well, but the character goes from being angry and violent to downright likable far too quickly to be completely convincing. John Mills (Hayley Mills' father) plays the serious detective-type quite well, very intense.I really enjoyed "Tiger Bay" it has enough energy and pace to keep you engaged. It never drags or gets lost on its way to conclusion. For a film of its kind from the period in which it was produced, this is one of the best I've seen. This is a great little thriller.