2 Anglaises en délire

I can't believe Leonard Maltin dissed this picture -- it's a rare gem of trippy brilliance, influential as hell on arbiters of style like "Absolutely Fabulous" and the "Austin Power" series. Lynn Redgrave (!), fresh out of "Georgy Girl", bumbles through looking like a great big blonde lovable cow in a succession of astonishing wigs, while her costar Rita Tushingham (!!) veers back and forth from frumpy/frowny to slapstick/mime to The Face of the 60's. The humor is broad and scatological, but cutting when its satire -- sample song lyric: "I can't sing, but I'm young!!" If you can find it, grab it.

Swinging London produced more good music than film, if you ask me, but this anarchistic comedy falls among the better productions of the era. Writer George Melly (who apparently also appeared in Makaveyev's Sweet Movie) presents a wild series of episodes structured around a marginal narrative. Gum snapping Lynn Redgrave and big-eyed Rita Tushingham relocate from their small rural town to happening London and instantly their life savings get stolen. When they're unable to pay for their slap-up breakfast, Tushingham quickly secures a job washing dishes and just as quickly loses it after an impromptu paint and food fight. Meanwhile, Redgrave has secured jobs as nightclub hostesses. Seedy customer Ian Carmichael picks up Redgrave but Tushingham succeeds in saving her friends' chastity. Trendy fashion photographer Michael York somehow enters the scene by capitalizing off a humiliating picture of Redgrave, then instigating a pie fight at her new workplace (a restaurant that only serves pies, natch). When the girls return to their house, they find it has been destroyed as part of a TV prank and fortuitously receive 10,000 pounds in return. And this is when the story really explodes. Redgrave uses the money to sponsor her career as pop artist, which explodes overnight. There's a brilliant recording studio sequence that takes a hefty stab at prefabricated artistic product: Redgrave's song sounds terrible while recorded but excellent in playback. Concurrent to Redgrave's rise to stardom, awkward Tushingham achieves equal fame as a fashion model for new boyfriend York, and the two friends begin to despise one another. Smashing Time proceeds with a number of parties, destructive humor and a passable conclusion. Throughout the film, non-diagetic narrative songs document the characters' moods. This unusual device and other creative moments, including a dandy so distraught by getting pied that he commits suicide, evidence an adventurous force behind the script. Indeed, director Desmond Davis barely makes his presence felt. Unlike most films driven by the written word, this film's script would allow for a great finished product with any director with an adequate budget. Storytelling, after all, needs act as film's primary purpose and thus occasionally a film such as Smashing Time indicates that the director does not necessarily need to act as a film's primary author. This film also offers a valuable historic treatment of London during a particularly unique phase. Then well-known psych group Tomorrow show up all over the film, possibly as a stab at authenticity but effective if so. Nevertheless, their music does not actually appear in the movie; we're treated instead to a few songs by the undeservedly less famous group Skip Bifferty.

I watched this film in its entirety on Youtube (May 2011) and am glad that I did. This film is a time capsule of the styles and faces of the mid-late 1960s and of 'groovy' London. The film offers a cornucopia of great faces of British comedy, all of which add to the mayhem of a loosely directed, pie-in-your-face slapstick comedy.

This film presents you with several extended pie-fight sequences, sixties songs (none of which are famous) and lots and lots of London scenery, the film being shot entirely on location. None of the cast are taking this film seriously and the result is actually quite funny, and adequately entertaining to hold attention for 100 minutes. Rather than feel dated this film is more of a time capsule of an era some 45 years old.

In short, the film is good humoured and worth seeking out. Play spot the actor and cringe at the naff songs which are interspersed throughout the movie. It's too much.

I was living in London when this film opened, and it now seems an oddly accurate time capsule of the period, somewhere between trendy and tatty. Critics hated the film for trying to create a female Laurel and Hardy, but now it's the colours, the clothes and the attitude that seems right (although it's hard to forgive those helium-voiced gay stereotypes). Trivia note; the character names and places, pieced together, form most of the first verse of 'Jabberwocky', suggesting the intention to create a new Alice in Wonderland.

As someone else has said regarding this film 'I could have done with less slapstick and more satire'. Yep. The satire is most definitely there and it's funny but the slapstick is lame warmed over nonsense and should just be fast forwarded through. Redgrave and Tushingham are great fun together and the supporting cast all pitch in nicely, ghastly stereotypes excepted. It's a film I have long been curious about and now that I've seen it I feel as if I've been rewarded with a bright and zippy laugh out loud at times comedy (somewhat of a rare commodity these days) and an affectionate look at what I suppose is now a lost world.