Four British Films

   To the bf's for the weekend.  It was almost spontaneous.  Sunday afternoon after a hectic morning at a car boot sale and a trip to the amazing Ickworth House (more of that in the next post) we settled down for an afternoon watching films.  Four in all, all British and all Post-War, and all, bar one, pants.  As a fan of British films, a sometime defender of them against silly snobbery, I have to admit they were, on the whole, pretty bloody ropey.  To my shame.

   You might have noticed in previous blogs a reference to the 'Half-hour rule'.  I don't think that the first film 'Cup-Tie Honeymoon' reached the half-hour before we bailed out.  It was made in 1948 but looked a decade older.  The cast, which included Sandy Powell, would one might have thought, insured success.  Alas, they did not.
    For the second and third films we fast-forwarded to the Sixties and early Seventies, choosing from the BFI 'Flipside' editions. 'Bronco Bullfrog', black and white, and dating from 1969/70, the story of a teenage working class lad in the east end.  While the Middle classes were swanning around being Hippies and would-be bohemians, lads like these were 'skins'.  A not unimportant thing to remember when you next encounter something about 'Swinging London'.  These lives did not swing. Neither, for that matter, did most lives in Britain of whatever class.  That said the film, which used real people not actors, lacked a real dramatic pull.  It just wasn't taut enough.  The opening scene said it all.  A gang breaks into a café, and they start to rummage around for cash, and there fleetingly right at the back of the shot is a middle aged woman standing in what must be the kitchen out the back.  I presume that was the cafe's real owner.  Worthy, but dull.  And sloppy.
   'Privilege' dates from 1967 and was directed by Peter Watkins (of 'Culloden' and 'The War Game'), and certainly the most ambitious, and quite frankly, the most ludicrous of the four.  A faux documentary, it is the story of a pop star, Steven Shorter, played by Paul Jones, and I suppose it can be said to be a critique of the pop industry.  If only it stayed with that simple premise it might have actually scored some hits, but it then drifts all over the place becoming at the end a dystopian fantasy with the Church of England (I mean, the Church of England, I ask you.), in league with the government and capital, as the promoters of a new fascism. Quite frankly risible. The film just sprawls about, the politics of the director probably getting in the way of the telling the story.  At times it was like being hit on the head with a hammer. Perhaps all these three films lacked clearness and directness of vision.  None the characters had much depth, which probably doesn't much matter in the comedy 'Cup-Tie Honeymoon', but it certainly does in the other two particularly when their ambition was so obviously high.
   It was therefore with a great deal of relief that we turned to the final film 'The Lovers!'.  A succinct, crisp film version of the 1960s Granada sitcom.  The director was Herbert Wise, the script by Jack Rosenthal.  Suitable enough for a film whose origins were with Granada (from the North) Manchester was treated almost as a character in itself.  One of the better television spin-offs.  A film of some charm.

Cup-Tie Honeymoon 

1948

Director:                 John E Blakeley
Producer:               John E Blakeley
Cinematographer: Geoffrey Faithful

Bronco Bullfrog 

1969/70

Director:                 Barney Platt-Mills
Producer:               Andrew St John
Cinematographer: Adam Barker-Mill


Privilege 

1967

Director:                 Peter Watkins         
Producer:               Peter Watkins, John Heyman, Timothy Burrill, Albert Finney
Cinematographer: Peter Suschitzky

The Lovers! 

1973

Director:                 Herbert Wise
Producer:               Maurice Foster
Cinematographer: Robert Huke