Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush

     

     It is the late Sixties, let us say 1968 as it is the year of this film's cinematic release.  It is a Saturday - likely the morning - in a New Town in southern England.  (It is actually Stevenage.)  The town, and particular the Town Square, is busy with shoppers.  Among them is 17 year old Jamie McGregor - sixth form pupil at the local Grammar School.  He is cycling around delivering groceries for a local supermarket.  His mind, however, is not his Saturday job, but elsewhere on another sort of job.  Sex.  Crumpet.  Skirt.  His mate Spike is getting it; even his younger brother is getting it....

     That evening Jamie goes on a date of sorts. His first. It is unsuccessful, as these things often are. 

     And so begins a year of comedic adventures as Jamie bounces from relationship to relationship battered, bruised but undimmed.  Here's the full list of runners: 'runny old Linda'; church-going Paula (and her mate Cath); affected Caroline Beauchamp; ditzy Audrey; and cool, leggy Mary Gloucester, doctor's daughter.

     Clive Donner's 1968 film is an adaptation of Hunter Davies debut novel of 1965, 'Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush'.  Screenplay by Hunter Davies and Larry Kramer, who was also Assistant Producer to Clive Donner; Cinematography by Alex Thompson; and score by Steve Winwood, Traffic, and the Spencer Davis Group - who also appear in the film playing at a young persons' disco at the local parish church. No parochial event that; in perhaps the most stylish scene in the film, the band - all in white - perform upon a circular revolving stage in the midst of a room lined in black engineering bricks, while a cool, well dressed crowd of the beautiful people dance around them.  It put in mind, momentarily, of Jacques Demy's wonderful 1967 film 'Les Demoiselles de Rochefort' with its mix of Nouvelle Vague (almost complete use of location filming) and heightened reality.  Would the Spencer Davis Group really have played a event in the local church hall?  (If you haven't already watched 'Les Demoiselles de Rochefort' then you should.  It's a treat.)

     The cast is excellent.  A 23 year old Barry Evans, playing Jamie, leads a cast of relative new-comers, some of whom went on to become household names here in the UK such as Christopher Timothy, and Diane Kean.  I think, however, the older members of the cast such as Michael Bates and Moira Frazer, playing Jamie's parents, have the edge when it comes to characterisation and dialogue.  One of the faults of films of that period is that they tend to sprawl about, as though the director is easily distracted (or self indulgent), and the narrative structure suffers as a result - think 'What's New Pussycat?', 'Casino Royale', and 'The Charge of the Light Brigade'.  It was as if films were suddenly subject to centrifugal force.  The Mulberry Bush is not totally immune from these tendences as there are a number of 'dream' sequences of various degrees of naughtiness, but their ability to disrupt the narrative is mainly held in check.

     As you may have realized by now I rather love this film, and I recommend a watch.  It's all very 'Sixties' and all rather innocent.  A long way from 'Get Carter'.  What a difference a mere three years make.  Gone is the charm, the innocence, and the optimism.

     It is a comedy of manners but in some ways is also a pre-cursor of the sex-comedy of the 1970s - the comedic bedroom scenes, the coitus interruptus -  and many of the cast would later appear in that peculiarly British genre: Barry Evans starred in 'Adventures of a Taxi Driver' & 'Under the Doctor'; Adriene Posta in both 'Adventures of a Taxi Driver' & 'Adventures of a Private Eye'; Diane Keen in 'The Sex Thief'; Christopher Timothy in 'Up Pompeii' & 'Eskimo Nell'; George Layton in 'Confessions of a Driving Instructor'. I simply didn't know that so many were made!

Here we go Round The Mulberry Bush

1968

Producer:               Clive Donner

Director:                 Clive Donner

Cinematographer: Alex Thompson

St Paul, Plasmarl & St Peter, Newton: Part I

This post, both text and photos, was created was created just before the second lockdown.  The plan was create a single post on both the churches.  Plans have changed.  I hope to write a post on St Peter's soon.

     A study in contrast this, and two churches by that prolific Late Victorian Welsh architecture Edward Bruce Vaughan (1856-1919), who until moving to Wales I had not heard of. Bruce Vaughan was based in Cardiff and specialised in ecclesiastical work, designing some 45 churches in Glamorgan alone.  According 'The Buildings of Wales' he built eight churches in Swansea.  All, I suspect. of quarry faced masonry.
     Every time I head into town I pass this sad sight, St Paul, Plasmarl.  It stands at the southern end of the main street in Plasmarl, Neath Rd, hard by a busy roundabout. I rather love this church, which is all rather Bodley-esque with some interesting 'free-style' detailing.  The placing of the octagonal bell tower is masterly. Alas as you can see the whole thing is beginning to give way to ruin.  The people of Plasmarl deserve better.  Since I wrote those words three years ago now, the deterioration has continued.  The top stage of the tower has begun to tilt to the north and large cracks have opened up in the masonry.  All is Ichabod.

Get Carter

Thy holy cities are a wilderness, Zion is a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation.

     Saturday afternoon, I'm on the sofa, and in search of a film.  The television has nothing to offer me, so I turn to BBC iplayer, and my eyes light upon 'Get Carter'.  Mike Hodges' brilliant, brutal film of 1971.

     I have watched this film plenty of times.  I'm slightly surprised I haven't blogged about the film before.  It is a hard and uncompromising film.  Brutal and cynical, that has, I think rightly, been likened to a Jacobean Tragedy.  And tragedy it is.  There is a very high body count.

     'Get Carter' was, as far as I can remember, a bit of a cause celebre, when it first came out.  The critic Pauline Kael said of it, 'sadism-for-the-connoisseur [] so calculatedly cool and soulless and nastily erotic that it seems to belong to a new genre of virtuosic viscousness.' It has since then become a cult movie, and also a shorthand for the excesses of early 1970s British films.  It is also a paradox also for being simultaneously a product of the then past decade - the depiction sex, drugs, and pornography - and a criticism of it.  'Get Carter  is, along with two films I have reviewed before on this blog - 'The Ballad of Tam Lin' and 'Straight on till Morning', a prime example of the 'Sixties Hangover Film'.  A rather niche genre, but interesting. And may be important.

     The Carter in question, Jack, works for London organised crime, in the shape of Gerald Fletcher.  He is, as you might reasonably expect, a man of violence.  In an inspired title sequence we travel with Carter back home, to an British unnamed city somewhere in the North of England, to bury his brother Ted.  Carter is already suspicious of his brother's dead, and events confirm his doubts.  The funeral is perfunctory and sparsely attended; Ted's girlfriend, Doreen, arrives late, leaves hurriedly and when confronted by Carter is reluctant to speak.  Jack begins his enquiries.  And this film, in its curious way becomes a detective film, perhaps a dark satire on the English murder mystery, with Jack as amateur sleuth.  He re-enters the dark pit of local organised crime, and then suddenly the film reaches a hinge moment (which, I believe Hodges saw as a 'political' epiphany) and it becomes a revenge movie as Carter, as a destroying angel, goes on a very public campaign of retribution, wreaking havoc upon his enemies.  Though, it has to be said, he seems to be the least qualified person, morally, to do so. 

     The cast is superlative: Michael Caine, as the eponymous Carter, Brit Ekland, John Osbourne, Geraldine Moffat, Ian Hendry, and Kika Markham.  Director Mike Hodges (at his best), Producer Michael Klinger.  Excellent cinematography by Wolfgang Suschitsky, who worked in the British Documentary Movement, and brings an element of reportage to the proceedings.  And then there is score by Roy Budd.  I've heard it said that 'Get Carter' was the the last hurrah of the British arm of MGM.  There a sense that those involved what things to go out with a bang.  And they certainly did.

     Hodges also wrote the screenplay.  It is an adaptation of Ted Lewis's 1970 novel 'Jack's Return Home'.  (Klinger presented it to Hodges in Jan of that year, I believe a month or so before the book was published.)  Ted Lewis (1940-1982) had set the novel in north Lincolnshire where he grew up, in particular in the steel making town of Scunthorpe.  Hodges changed the location to Newcastle upon Tyne.

     I think there may be something in the choice of Newcastle over the less visually exciting Scunthorpe.  The city Hodges chooses to  depict is a wreck, decaying and corrupt.  Filthy and shoddy.  A place of turpitude. There is little glamour and that there is is connected to criminality.  Perhaps some subtle moralising.  The background to this is the then scandal of T Dan Smith, leader of Newcastle city council 1958-65.  A charismatic individual, and a man with fingers in many pies.  The sort of man, who to quote, yet again, the novelist Frank Herbert, 'ought to come with a warning label on the forehead: "May be dangerous to your health."  He was arrested in January 1970 and charged with 'receiving payments to influence local government contracts'.  He was tried in July 1971 and found not guilty.  In 1974 was brought to trial again, and that time pleaded guilty to corruption.  Smith was sentenced to 6 years at Her Majesty's pleasure.

     Hodges indeed saw this film in terms of 'the state of the nation', and he came came to see corruption beneath everything. In a 2016 interview with Adam Scovell he even sounded somewhat like Mary Whitehouse.  I'm stuck thinking that nothing quite fits, that there is something of a gap between Hodges intentions/rhetoric and the finished piece, good as it.  I am put in mind of work of Kurosawa who, for all his talk of being a pacifist, choreographed violence so beautifully.

Get Garter

1971

Producer:               Michael Klinger

Director:                 Mike Hodges

Cinematographer: Wolfgang Suschitsky

St Peter & St Paul, Weobley

     Last Monday, on our return from Worcestershire, we stopped briefly in Weobley - a large, remarkable village rich in half-timbered buildings even by the standards of Herefordshire.  our destination was, however, the parish church, St Peter & Paul.  

     The setting is quite perfect, standing slightly removed on the northern edge of the village and reached by a narrow lane - no footpaths but grass verges rich in foxgloves and cow parsley.  Ahead is the remarkable steeple.  A landmark, visible for miles, an exclamation mark in the border country, prominent rather in the manner of a tower in East Anglia.  The success lies not only in its height - when all the neighbouring churches are rather lowly affairs, but in the contrast of elegant spire, with, in the Herefordshire manner, lucarnes at its base, and large spiky pinnacles, and the austere, windowless tower.  The combined effect is very monumental, even aloof, and quite extraordinary.  I can't think of anything that comes close.

     The church itself is large and complex.  Rather impressive. Somewhat picturesque.  Impressive w front with Geometric Decorated w window w door.  The latter enriched with ball flower.  All very Herefordshire.  Quite a bit of Victorian work too.  The interior is also complex, but to be honest, a disappointment.  Whatever the merits of the architecture, all I can now recall is the way the building is being treated.  Like the City of Rome after the fall of the Western Empire.  Clutter everywhere.  Sadly none of the liturgical furnishings, whether Victorian or contemporary, are commensurate with the architecture.  The monuments, happily, are better, the best being the worldly Baroque monument to Colonel John Birch. 

'Charlie Bubbles'

    Last week we watched 'Charlie Bubbles', a 1967 British film starring Albert Finney, Liza Minnelli, Billie Whitelaw, Colin Blakely, and written by Shelagh Delaney.  Finney also directed. The producer was the actor Michael Medwin, who with Finney had founded the production company 'Memorial Enterprises' in 1965.*  Well, what's not to like? you may think.  As you can see it has all the ingredients for success - strong cast, talented script writer. You would be, however, be wrong.  The result is decidedly flat-footed.  Finney plays the eponymous hero, a successful novelist, who - accompanied by his secretary (Minnelli) - goes on a picaresque journey back to his roots in the North. (North of England that is.)  Not as bad as the adaptation of Iris Murdoch's 'A Severed Head' I reviewed in 2024 - 'Charlie Bubbles' has its moments, after all - but still a dud.

Charlie Bubbles

1967

Producer:               Michael Medwin

Director:                 Albert Finney

Cinematographer: -

* Memorial Enterprises not only produced 'Charlie Bubbles'. They were also responsible for, amongst others, 'A Day in the Life of Joe Egg', 'Privilege', and 'If....'.  they also produced a stage play: Julian Mitchell's 'Another Country' in 1981.

Hail Bounteous May: Verse for May Day

Song on May Morning by John Milton 1608-1674

Now the bright morning Star, Dayes harbinger,
  Comes dancing from the East, and leads with her
  The Flowry May, who from her green lap throws
The yellow Cowslip, and the pale Primrose.
  Hail bounteous May that dost inspire 
  Mirth and youth, and warm desire,
  Woods and Groves, are of thy dressing,
  Hill and Dale, doth boast thy blessing.
Thus we salute thee with our early Song,
And welcom thee, and wish thee long. 

To Violets by Robert Herrick 1591-1674

WELCOME, maids of honour!

        You do bring

        In the spring,

And wait upon her.

She has virgins many,

        Fresh and fair;

        Yet you are

More sweet than any.

You're the maiden posies,

        And so graced

        To be placed

'Fore damask roses.

Yet, though thus respected,

        By-and-by

        Ye do lie,

Poor girls, neglected

Now is the month of Maying by Thomas Morley 1557-1602

Now is the month of maying,

When merry lads are playing,

Fa la la la la la la la la,

Fa la la la la la la lah.

Each with his bonny lass

Upon the greeny grass.

Fa la la la la la la la la,

Fa la la la la la la lah.

The Spring, clad all in gladness,

Doth laugh at Winter's sadness,

Fa la la la la la la la la,

Fa la la la la la la lah.

And to the bagpipe's sound

The nymphs tread out their ground.

Fa la la la la la la la la,

Fa la la la la la la lah.

Fie then! why sit we musing,

Youth's sweet delight refusing?

Fa la la la la la la la la,

Fa la la la la la la lah.

Say, dainty nymphs, and speak,

Shall we play barley break?

Fa la la la la la la la la,

Fa la la la la la la lah.

May Morning on Magdalen Tower

by John William Burgon (1813–1888)

Now ring out all the bells a merry chime;

While the hoarse horn croaks forth, a league below,

The note which doubtless seems the true sublime

To urchins straining might and main to blow.

Ring out, glad bells! and let the sleepers know

That, while they slept, we watched the month of May

Twine the first garland for her virgin brow.

Then bid them rise, for 'tis the prime of day:

And lo, the young Month comes, all smiling, up this way!

Life's May-day by Ben Johnson (1572-1637)

I saw the rustic May Queen, crowned

   With coronel of flowers,

With merry children gathered round,

   To laugh away the hours.

In morning sheen, with stately mien,

   Walked the fair Queen of May;

And little care, or thought, was there,

   Of how time sped away.

I saw the sombre evening come, 

   With train of lagging hours,

The fretful children turned them home,

   Nor brought their faded flowers.

In life's fresh morn, fond hopes are born

   Which fade ere shadows come;

And life's long day, though fair as May,

   May make us sigh for home.

'Mlinaric on Decorating'

      I've had this book - large, hardback, excellent photography - on my shelves for years now, but as with any 'recently' published book I feel a bit reticent about posting images from it, but here goes....

     Mr Mlinaric, born in 1939, is one of Britain's foremost interior designers, though now retired.  He has worked for the likes of Mick Jagger and the Rothschilds.  As a child he was inspired by a number of chance encounters with remarkable interiors; Widcombe Manor near Bath, home of Jeremy & Camilla Fry; Leixlip Castle, home of Desmond & Mariga Guinness.  Ireland, in general, stirred his visual imagination: Dublin, 'a perfect Georgian city, shabby and seedy, old-fashioned, with little shops with turf fires burning', and the decaying country houses of the Ascendancy, 'when a celling came down, the family just closed the door and moved to another room.  They wouldn't sell their houses, hoping for a better days, and as a young man found that very romantic, just holding on and keeping things.'  There is something very poetic about these sentiments. He trained at the Bartlett, moving from architecture to interior design after a year.  He was part of the whole Swinging Sixties thing, and apparently knew everyone, some of whom, such as Ozzie Clarke moved in the circles documented in Peter Schlesinger's 'Checkered Past'.  There is a short documentary ostensibly about young men, including Mlinaric, with long hair made in 1967 by the BBC.  One way, perhaps, of seeing that whole 'Swinging Sixties' phenomena is as an attempt to re-enchant the world, to revive the poetic and the mystical.

     David Mlinaric seems, from the beginning of his career, to have worked in two styles, one contemporary and one traditional.  It is the latter that interests me and in particular there are three schemes from quite early on in his career which I think are quite masterful: Thorpe Hall (1970-72), interesting not only because it represents his own taste, but was done with such assurance for somebody in their early thirties; Beningborough Hall, (1977-79), for the National Trust; 'An Eighteenth Century Lodge', (1977-1979).  It was this last scheme that I remember from an early edition of World of Interiors.  Later work in this style is to be found at Luggala (1997-2006), Waddesdon Manor (1990-2002), and Milgate Park (2002-2006).  At times it is Neo-Classical, at other times almost Neo-Victorian.  Sometimes, interestingly, 'Sixties'.  Perhaps it never went away.  (Though Thorpe Hall stands almost out of time.)  Anyway, Mlinaric moves with ease and admirable skill between styles, and with this remarkable talent he has contributed to the public realm here in the UK with restoration of Spencer House, London; the Royal Opera House, Convent Garden; The National Gallery; The National Portrait Gallery; and the design of The British Galleries at the V&A.  His knowledge must be encyclopaedic. 

Mlinaric on Decorating  Mirabel Cecil & David Mlinaric, Francis Lincoln Limited, 2008