Beatnik kicks… The Party's Over (1965)

"… unpleasant, tasteless and rather offensive…"

 John Trevelyan, British Board of Film Censors, March 1963

It would take Guy Hamilton’s film two years to gain release after the BBFC found it just too much on first viewing and the version that made it to the big screen had several scenes recut and a voice-over introduction from Oliver Reed explaining that it was “This film is the story of some young people who chose to become - well, for want of a better word - 'beatniks'.  It's not an attack on beatniks; the film has been made to show the loneliness, and the unhappiness, and the eventual tragedy that can come from a life lived without love for anyone or anything.  Living only for kicks is not enough.” And cue the great Annie Ross singing, Time Waits for No Man music by John Barry and lyrics from Mike Pratt who is also one of the players in the film (and Floyd, Gilmour, Mason bassist, Guy Pratt’s father).

This message comes as the beatnik/hipster crowd make their way over Chelsea Bridge back north of the river after a wild party in Knightsbridge. They walk in the silence of their emerging four AM hangovers, some happy, some sad and at least two in thrall to a beautiful American woman walking at the front. There are various versions of this film and the BFI’s Flipside dual pack features both the shorter director’s cut – around 90 minutes - and the longer 94 version which cuts out some of the more shocking moments and inserts more “learnings” for the more nihilistic of the main characters.

Directed by Guy Hamilton from a script by Marc Behm (Help!, Charade etc) the film has a mostly young cast presenting us with post-jazz/pre-hippy culture with the clear influence of drugs and drink on their behaviours. These are the first of a new questioning generation and from 1963 a lot of what they say correlates with the clunky anti-authoritarianism of Peter Fonda and The Wild Angels…

The big difference here is that these cats are mostly British middle class, or even posher, especially the intelligent but annoyingly challenging Moise (Oliver Reed) a character who must have given his nanny worries from an early age and who is rebelling against all expectation because he can afford to. Yet still, there are real risks in his posturing and there’s no doubt that he not only always wants the one he can’t have but here it really is driving him mad.

The Queen Bee of their social group is an American heiress, the ethereal Melina (the stunning Louise Sorel, who I believe is still working?) who see right through him possibly because in some ways they’re alike; both rebelling against their privilege and unable to commit to anyone or anything in the endless, trust-funded waiting room of their mid-Twenties – the same age as most of the cast during filming in 1963, Louise Sorel being one of the youngest at 22.

Louise Sorel and Oliver Reed

Their partying and general noise doesn’t always ring true but the film opens really well with some painted feet leaving foot marks on the ceiling of a nice apartment in South Kensington as the camera tracks across the amin characters via drinks being passed, cigarettes being lit or, then stolen to light a slim cigar as we see the first instance of Moise attitude to his friends and, in this case, lovers robbing the steadfast Libby (Ann Lynn, who is one of the best performers in this film), only to throw her cigarette away after he’s lit the cheroot.

Amongst the others, an American artist called Geronimo played by Mike Pratt with a wayward accent, the demure Nina (Katherine Woodville), an older German called Tutzi (Maurice Browning), the tactile and inseparable, possibly affectionate, Countess (Mildred Mayne) and Fran (Annette Robertson), and the young Ada (Alison Seebohm). The there’s Philip (Jonathan Burn) who is besotted with Melina and, as with even Moise, this is unrequited.

Into this picture arrives Carson (Clifford David), the successful young American businessman who is promised to Melina, he even works for her father Ben (Eddie Albert*) and so it feels more than slightly arranged. Melina might well agree as she decides to avoid meeting him and enlists the gang to misdirect and mislead him despite the best efforts of their landlord, Hector (Roddy Maude-Roxby) to help the handsome American.

This all feels a bit cruel rather than funny but luckily Carson is up to it and he has his own reservations about his intended enough to not be that surprised by her behaviour and, indeed, to be impressed by the most sensible of her English friends Nina.

Things take a turn after another wild party at which finally Nina tries to take Carson to meet Melina but when they get there, she’s left and no one will say where. The next day, after a night consummating their relationship, Nina tries to get Carson to go with her to Stowe-on-the-Wold… she also tries to tell him something about the party and Melina.

Then Father Ben arrives and the stakes are raised as different versions of the party emerge and the fate of Melina becomes less certain…

Dusty Video Rating: The Party’s Over is coy over the key issue in the story even with the restored Director’s version on the BFI’s DVD and Blu-ray set. Without giving the secret away, the fuller version does still provide some upsetting footing all of which explains the characters motivations for what happens next – especially Philip.

Oliver Reed is outstanding in portraying the entitled aggressor, whose role in life is to be the fly in the soup of the pompous “straights” and he has the range to show a more vulnerable side to his character and one capable of learning in the final analysis. A lot of the other actors are given precious little to do but Eddie Albert delivers as does Ann Lynn and Katherine Woodville who, along with Clifford David, play two of the most sympathetic characters.

Of course there's also the score from John Barry which always lifts any film and which here allows him to replicate the modern jazz of the cellar clubs and the torch song that starts the film and features at another climactic scene. He also borrows the bass line - slightly altered - from 007!

As cautionary tales go it’s harder hitting/more uncomfortable than most and gives some great location shots of London in the raw, or at least Chelsea and Kensington in the early 60s!

 

*As Fate would have it, Katherine Woodville ended up marrying Eddie Albert’s son Edward in 1979 and the two were together until his death in 2006.

I might… I'll Never Forget What's'isname (1967)

Oliver Reed is spotted right at the start with a sharp metal axe on his shoulder, walking purposefully through the West End towards what looks like the old Economist building off Piccadilly. As the titles roll he’s bounding through busy 1967 streets with hardly a second glance from the mass of pedestrians around him.

He enters the offices of Lute Advertising, makes his way up to his office and then wields the axe, destroying his desk, chair, filing cabinets in a few devastating movements… he has had this job and wants something more “honest”: “silly boy,” says his boss Mr Lute (Orson Welles), “There aren’t any…” as he aims a golf ball from the agency’s roof garden in eth direction of their competitors.

But Reed’s character, Andrew Quint, is not for turning so easily, he’s exceptionally good at his job but wants to escape and, despite Lute’s conviction that he’ll be back, he goes to work for his old friend Nicholas (Norman Rodway) who runs a worthy but barely profitable literary magazine. The pay is hardly worth mentioning but it’s honest work… what he wanted to do rather than what he ended up doing and being successful at…

Orson and Oliver

This may be a period piece but the central quandary has never dated. Michael Winner directs as he did for The Jokers, Reed’s earlier film in which mainstream values were questioned. Hard to think of the director of Death Wish as this challenging but Winner had been editor of Varsity magazine at Cambridge in the fifties and maybe there was some autobiography here? Quint even goes to Cambridge to meet one of the magazine’s contributors.

This film is not as slapstick as The Jokers and indeed is rather more serious as it progresses: there are no easy answers for Mr Quint nor Mr Winner…

Quint’s a man on the run, not just from his own success but also from his family and his wife, Louise (Wendy Craig) – the two still seem very connected but almost casually falling apart. She’s seeing other men more in retaliation to his constant search for a new sexual partner. Even when Quint meets someone he likes he’s still eyeing up the competition…   he cannot settle and is distracted by the “advertising” on view.

He goes to visit model Josie (Marianne Faithfull) sneaking peeks at her in the bath and then rendezvous with the married Susannah  (Lyn Ashley) at a disused signal box… oh Thomas Beaching, so much to answer for?

Carol White and Ollie

He’s detached form them all with the exception of his wife – who not only understands him but herself as well – watched a lot of Antonioni did you Mr Winner? Nothing at all wrong with that.

It’s too easy to overlook Reed’s acting chops given his later Brando-esque  reliance on his presence (Mr Welles also provides a fine example of the same…) and here he is very good with a far more nuanced and lonely character than in his two previous Winner films.

In this moment Quint wants to find himself through intellectual work, escaping the get-rich certainties his creative talent brings him in advertising. There’s a pretty young secretary, Georgina Elben (Carol White) who naturally attracts his attention but she’s wary of his love ‘em and leave ‘em baggage…

The two grow closer and – for some reason – Quint decides to invite her to his school reunion. It’s an all-male audience of course – and Georgina stands out like and attractive young woman amongst the dinner-jacketed old boys. It’s horrible… and the men revert to easily to type as their former teachers forget their names and jumble up anyone who had an ounce of individuality… no doubt all heartfelt stuff for Winner and his writer Peter Draper.

Carol White and Norman Rodway

Quint is still suffocated by his privileged background and still unable to make lasting human connections – gee, it sure is tough being a public schoolboy with an imagination.

There’s a nice turn from Michael Hordern as the bumbling headmaster – of course such a man would be in charge of a fee-paying school… he never forgets a face and a name only he can’t always remember the two together correctly: emblematic of an  indifferent establishment.

Some of the boys, led by the uber-obnoxious Charles Maccabee (Harvey Hall), spot on old victim and decide to renew their bullying. As they chase the poor fellow through the grounds, Quint steps in and fights back only to end up the worse for wear…

Georgina takes him back to her apartment where, in his delirious state, he has vivid dreams of his school life in which Frank Findlay as an inappropriate Chaplain fills his head full of poison… Waking with Georgina he allows genuine emotion to seep through…

Marianne Faithfull

The two travel to Cambridge together to meet recalcitrant author, Gerald Sater(Harry Andrews) who is late with his work but all too willing to deliver in return for a pay rise and the chance for a pervy flirt with Georgina as he shows her his collection of what the butler saw viewers…

The couple return to London to find that Nicholas, urged on by his long-suffering wife, Carla (Ann Lynn) has sold out to a mysterious third party. Of course it’s Lute just trying to get his man back and it may appear he has succeeded as Quint agrees to produce one last advert that will lay open the dishonesty of his profession once and for all.

He makes his statement, pulling in genuine statements and reactions from his lovers and ex-wife and yet he may not get the result he hopes for: in this world of sacrifice and “new clothes” who knows what anything will mean to anyone?

The films closes out in far darker tones than you’d expect and indeed is far more serious than Reed and Winner’s previous collaborations…both would have to step off in order to free themselves of the World defining their worth and their work…

Dusty verdict: The film has some very good moments and the performances from Black, Craig and Reed are especially impressive.

Maybe the central premise rings a bit hollow but then few of us ever really escape the trap of making money from jobs we’re quite good at: we can’t always chose how to make a living apart from the fact that most of us end up exactly where we’re meant to be in terms of our skill sets.

Not everyone can break free to find a plan B…

Then film is available on DVD from Amazon and other reputable suppliers.

Thames-side story… Four in the Morning (1965)

This sparse film wears its influences lightly on its sleeve and, whilst it could easily be the back of Monica Vitti’s head the camera focuses on as she looks out Thames-ward, it’s Ann Lynn’s as she struggles to find her depth of feeling towards her lover. French new wave and Antonioni may well have been formative but this film has a very British feel all of its own.

The film’s Thames locations have a muddy glamour accentuated by the somewhat under-lit camerawork of Larry Pizer: it had to be this way in order to cope with the contrast between bright morning sky and dark docksides. It’s a fascinating essay on London’s riverside showing a world just recently disappeared replaced from Wapping to Battersea by re-development, posh flats and office blocks… they only took down the old cranes in front of the power station a few weeks ago.

The characters are also particularly British (and Irish) with their quiet desperation: just about hanging on to hope through the distractions of sex, drink and see-through humour – which one of them will crack?

Ann Lynn

The emotion on show is also subtly under-scored by a debut film score from John Barry, none of his Bond pyrotechnics here or the swing of Beat Girl, just mournful jazz perfectly reflecting the dark waters and muddied motivations.

The film is focused on two relationships in crisis – four in the morning? – but there’s also another participant. The film starts abruptly with the discovery of a woman’s body: found  drowned in the Thames in bloated stillness on the shore out East. Throughout we slip to and from the two other story strands to follow the gruesome processing of this corpse, all the while trying to work out which one of the two women it might be… if either of course. We assume the narrative to be a flash back and the work of the river police, coroners and undertakers to be in the present.

The story moves downstream from the initial discovery to a nightclub near Chelsea in which a cabaret performer (Ann Lynn) is winding up for the night. She receives a phone call from a man (Brian Phelan) but doesn’t seem keen on meeting up with him.

Ann Lynn and Brian Phelan

He insists though and comes to greet her in the early morning light as she leaves the venue. The two look out over the river and smile: not strangers but not lovers either, not yet. They walk the riverside pathways and find a café for an early breakfast. There’s an uncertainty to them and they only abandon reserve when they decide to borrow a motor boat for a trip. There’s some superb footage as they sweep through Putney and round up towards the east end docks.

There’s love but she wants to be sure whilst he thinks sex to be the only way to demonstrate his feelings: to mean it he has to say it and the woman is chilled by his inability to explain himself.

Judie Dench

Elsewhere a young woman (Judi Dench) is near despair as her teething baby refuses to sleep. Her husband (Norman Rodway) is out on the tiles  with his best mate (Joe Melia), a joker who wants his friend to be the life and soul he used to be. The man takes them both back to their flat where they rudely interrupt his sleep-deprived wife.

Lads night out: Joe Melia and Norman Rodway

Here again the couple struggle to communicate as the lines between married life and a good time have not been properly drawn. He still wants to have fun but she feels the responsibility of parenthood and career more strongly. Is this just a phase of adjustment or have they drifted too far apart.

Talk but no understanding

Two women under so much pressure… will it be too much in the end?

The girl leaves and the man travel back West by tube and enjoy carefree moments chasing oranges across a bridge but it’s just a fleeting distraction and they will part at Aldgate Station (which has barely changed) leaving her to travel on alone.

The wife runs off but returns to find husband asleep… they talk about their lives and face towards their rivers front living room windows in neutral…as uncertain as ever.

The body is weighed, stripped and finger printed before being shut away in the mortuary… who was she? Do we know her?

Dusty verdict: Four in the Morning may tell a slight story but it tells it with style. Written and directed by Anthony Simmons it is a thought provoking film that lingers in the mind… The cast are superb and none more so than young Judi Dench. This was her first film, five decades before M, and her theatrical training is in evidence as her controlled expressiveness pulls the viewer in... we hope it's not her who succumbs but she's the one most believably at wit's end.

The film is available on DVD and is worth your investment: it's here from Amazon and here on Movie Mail.

London’s burning…Flame in the Streets (1961)

Notting Hill’s not what it used to be, not since Hugh Grant, Richard Curtis and Julia Roberts rubber stamped it as the capital of the culturally-cosy rom-com and, whilst there is romance, there’s precious little comedy in this frank depiction of multi-cultural London back in 1961.

Post war Britain had seen a mass influx of immigration from the former colonies and dilapidated Georgian Squares of Westbourne Grove, Bayswater and Knotting Hill had provided cheap, exploitative accommodation for many West Indian families. Tensions had run high as the run-down heart of former empire had struggled to assimilate so much change so quickly. The Noting Hill Riots took place in the late summer of 1958 and they saw the jailing of dozens of white men as well as the establishment of the Carnival aimed at bringing people together after all the hate.

But whilst society is now more integrated in many respects, race and immigration are scarcely less of an issue, and Flame in the Streets is still an important and resonating film and all the more remarkable for being over fifty years old.

Directed by Roy Ward Baker and screen-written by Ted Willis from his own play Hot Summer Night, the film focuses the key issues through the family of trade unionist Jacko Palmer (John Mills) – a decent man, protecting the equal rights of all his chapel members with a calm eloquence.

Johnny Sekka

Unknown to Jacko, his daughter Kathie (Sylvia Syms – how many great roles did she have over this period?!) is in a relationship with another member of staff at the school where she teaches one Peter Lincoln (Johnny Sekka) who just happens to be black.

In Jacko’s factory, he is supporting the promotion of a black foreman Gabriel Gomez (Earl Cameron). Gabriel is smart and a hard worker yet he has to endure racial abuse from white co-workers and there are senior union members who won’t countenance his appointment – not because they’re biased but because they “recognize” the problems this will cause… this is the running theme of the film: the whole pragmatic rationalization for racialism… it’s not you it’s the *situation*…

Earl Cameron and Ann Lynn

We’re given hints of the potential for mixed marriages with Gabriel’s home life with his white wife, Judy (Ann Lynn) who seems to have given up a lot to be with her man: living in reduced circumstances in a house stuffed full of immigrant families. There wasn’t adequate provision for the new Britons and many were abused by opportunist landlords.

Slum conditions and discrimination at work were one thing but racial violence is never far away with three of Gabriel’s Caucasian workmates on the lookout for trouble: goading him at work and where he lives as they travel in search of trouble.

Jacko prepares for the big union meeting at home with his wife Nell (Brenda De Banzie) and father (the brilliant Wilfrid Brambell) also a union man: there’s promotion ahead for Jacko too if he plays his cards right and long-suffering Nell dreams of a change of scenery…she has sacrificed much for her husband.

Sylvia Syms and John Mills

But things are coming to ahead at home to as Kathie gets spotted with her boyfriend and Nell finds out about the relationship. De Banzie acts up a storm as she attempts to deal with the facts…all her prejudice and fear surface as she imagines her daughter throwing away her future on a relationship that in Nell’s eyes will doom Kathie to a life on the outside.

Meanwhile Jacko is carrying the day at the meeting as he persuades the union that Gabe should be valued on his abilities alone and not his racial background. He argues fair and square but it’s not long before he is forced to face his own prejudices when Nell tells him of Kathie’s determination to marry the man she loves.

Nell and Jacko confront Kathie

Jacko takes a more rational approach than his wife and tries a subtler line, inverting the logic of the union meeting to say that this relationship should be judged on its potential utility and workability in the face of the accepted facts of racial intolerance.

He goes to speak with Peter directly and raises the same question putting the onus on him to justify the longer term discomfort any marriage will cause Kathie… it’s the gentlest form of intolerance wrapped up in reasonableness. Is Jacko being honest with himself – at least Nell admits her prejudice?

But it is a complex and difficult moment and you don’t lose sympathy with the family even when viewing them with modern sensibilities.

Mills, Sekko and Syms

Spoilers ahead: Events take a dramatic turn for the worst as the white gang brings violence to the bonfire night celebrations and there’s a riot going on pulling in thugs from both sides as well as the good guys… a riot of their own.

The spell is broken by the arrival of the police and as Gabe gets pushed into the fire. Pulled out by Peter and Jacko you hope for his recovery and that, somehow, this will be the start of the move towards reconciliation.

The film ends as Peter and Kathie walk back home with Jacko and Nell… ”if only it were that simple” said one of my companions but the ending gives no guarantees.

Dusty verdict:  A quite stunning period piece that deserves wider recognition: this is Britain starting to face up to itself barely a decade after the Windrush brought the first immigrants across from the Caribbean.

John Mills leads a superb cast by example with special mentions to Earl Cameron and Ann Lynn whose love and mutual support hopefully lead the way.

Flame in the Streets is available on an apparently less than satisfactory DVD in the UK although the US edition (which I watched) does proper justice to the CinemaScope aspect ratio.