Film and TV at the NFT and elsewhere

Witchcraft Night at the NFT 31/10/09

On this most auspicious of evenings, at London’s NFT, only real Witches would do. Real ones; not actors, not celebrities adopting ‘religion of the week’, but actual, spirit raising, sky-clad witches.

‘Out of Step’was a 1957 ‘docu’ which weekly took on people whose views were a little out of the ordinary. Dr Margaret Murray, a lady in her 90’s, was then considered the foremost authority on Witchcraft. She put forward the theory that Witchcraft represented the survival of a pan-European Dianic/Dionysiac pagan religion. Her appearance suggested a mystically inclined and rather kindly Miss Marple, but there is no denying her erudition. Our next guest was the wild-haired, goateed Dr Gerald Gardner, Isle of Man resident and then the British Isles’ premier ‘Witch’. Dr Gardner also wrote extensively on this subject, though, unlike Dr Murray’s, his submissions were from the inside. His cheerful demeanour throughout the sometimes mocking questioning of Daniel Farson endeared Gardner to the viewer, and it was hard not to like his eccentric Latin Master persona. The last was Louis Wilkinson, whose memories of Aleister Crowley were as fond as they were acute.

The next offering was about Alex and Maxine Sanders, who by the mid-sixties, were styling themselves ’King and Queen of the Witches’. Some readers may recall their regular appearances in such serious paranormal enquiry publications as the News of the World and The People, usually depicted naked, in the midst of a magic circle with their coven. The blindfolding and tying of a naked initiate, the ‘scourging’ (a soft fly-fan, it wouldn’t hurt) and the giving of the Five Fold Salute (where a Witch kisses another on the feet, the knees, above the genitals and on each shoulder and the forehead) are all part of the ‘ordeal’, which Alex Sanders tells us, is essential to becoming a Witch. Sanders’ seemed like an experienced actor passing on his knowledge to a select few students. Once again, I felt that the commentary was at times unnecessarily critical, sneering even, especially when Alex and Maxine’s previous jobs were mentioned. (Chemical worker and garage attendant.) Perhaps if they had spoken received pronunciation and been a little more middle class, the presenter would have been more sympathetic toward them.


The final film ‘Secret Rites’ was nothing less than the exposure of the Witches’ most sacred ceremonies, played out by Alex Sanders and his coven. The various ‘nature dying and nature re-born’ myths are played out by the coven members, sometimes masked like the Horned One (a goat-like creature, not to be confused with the Christian Devil, which he pre-dates.) sometimes naked. The basing of rituals on Egyptian sources is mentioned, and whilst some scholars might argue that such rituals are modern in origin, with only the trappings of ancient Egyptian culture added, their drama and aptness cannot be doubted.


Scenester
Mysterious Britain at the NFT 29/10/10

Vic and Will Flipside must have had to cover themselves in protective amulets and hang up plenty of garlic when they took their second dive into the murky world of the ‘BFI Archive: Supernatural Section’. This hazardous journey bore plenty of fruit last year (see my article ‘Witchcraft Night at the NFT’ on this same website). Fortifying ourselves with a stoup of malmsey and moon cakes with black butter, we piled into the NFT to see what was on offer.

It’s worth noting that apart from one item, all of the features on screen this Hallowe’en were news reports. First up was a 1973 edition of ‘Open Door’, about the Aetherius Society, a group dedicated to spreading the word about an alien who, thankfully for us, in stark contrast to all other stereotypical aliens, cares about us, and our planet, and is here to help us with our problems. Aetherius’ contact on earth is Dr George King, a man who appears uniquely qualified to act as the conduit for the alien’s words of wisdom. He encourages his followers to imbue objects with ‘prayer power’, which is then directed toward the world’s trouble spots. Dr King and his followers, resplendent in 1970’s fashions and hairstyles, seem sincere and must have had their hands full in that war-torn decade, trying to avert global annihilation.

A brief clip from Midsummer 1972 saw astronomer Patrick Moore take his place amongst the Druids celebrating their rites at Stonehenge with a particularly miserable, overcast dawn sky as backdrop. This was followed by a tourist information film from 1964, narrated by the then Poet Laureate, John Betjeman, about the charming area around Avebury with its famous standing stones and nearby Solsbury Hill.

Things really got into their stride with ‘Out of Step: Other Worlds Are Watching Us’, with arch sceptic Daniel Farson going head to head with those who believe we are not alone in the universe, and who are already attracting the attention of other, more advanced beings. The magnificently named Brindsley Le Poer Trench expounded his view that people from other parts of our solar system, and even beyond it, are visiting us regularly, and communicating their thoughts to us. Several other guests, including the aforementioned Dr King, chipped in with their parallel views, and were quizzed by Daniel Farson about them with his usual mixture of serious enquiry and outright cynicism. To be fair, Farson also probed the views of a scientist and non-believer in alien life forms in the course of the programme. Considering the Cold War period setting of this 1957 report, none of the sincere arguments of the believers succeeded in convincing this sceptic of the existence of aliens, nor that the sightings of mysterious lights and objects in the sky were anything other than our country testing out its latest warplanes on the quiet.

‘Twilight: Witchcraft’ from 1964 was much more disturbing stuff. An ‘expert’ in witchcraft, who strongly resembled the archetypal rambler complete with anorak, backpack and flask of hot tea, took us round a ruined church and its grounds, showing us recent evidence of nasty goings-on. To be specific, a pair of ‘fetishes’ (voodoo dolls to you and me), one male, one female, and a sheep’s heart pierced with hawthorns, were found nailed to a door. His interpretation of these grisly trinkets was that a spurned lover was trying to win back her man’s affections from another woman by symbolically killing their illegitimate love affair. The narrative was delivered in a scientific, entirely plausible tone and even though not proof of anything more dubious than one person’s belief that it could work, was strong stuff for TV.

‘Leap in the Dark: Exorcism’ from 1973 took on this then very topical subject, but the passage of nearly forty years makes it look a grimly comical affair, despite the obvious sincerity of all involved. A young, fashionably dressed couple are troubled with a malicious spirit in their modest home. It’s one thing playing childish tricks on the lady of the house, hiding things from her etc., but quite another when the baby is afeard. Call in the Exorcist and his assistant, who carry out the sacred ritual with censer, prayers and holy water, the arsenal in the war against Satan. I couldn’t suppress a giggle at the thought of Old Nick hiding the fondue set, running amok with the Ronco Buttoneer and changing the TV channel from Match of the Day to the BBC2 Arts Programme, as John and Jane Tanktop splutter the Blue Nun back into the glasses. You’ll be relieved to hear that peace was restored after the gentle ministrations of the priestly duo.

Ridiculously camp shenanigans followed in 1970’s ’24 Hours: Highgate Vampire’, which in parts resembled a Hammer film acted out by happy amateurs with a taste for Victorian outerwear. Dark rumours about Highgate Cemetery abound, as they do elsewhere in the world, often in countries where the vampire bat is not a native species. The uncompromising high gothic architecture of this Victorian Valhalla sets the scene perfectly for diabolism and unspeakable rituals, adding to the feeling of displacement from the modern age which several of the characters involved obviously feel. The report concentrates on disturbances, which came to the attention of the authority responsible for, this last resting place for the rich and famous of the 19th Century. They took the form of tombs being desecrated and bodies being used in what looked like magic rituals. It would not be long before other interested parties showed their faces here, some sincere, some just plain dotty.  A lone young man had been observed entering the cemetery and patrolling it with his crucifix. Obsessed with the idea that a vampire stalked the cemetery, he was determined to hunt down the bloodsucker and nail him in his coffin. He was later arrested, but was clearly in need of some tender loving care from some sympathetic members of the medical profession, and I hope he got it.  

Our lone vampire stalker had a rival, however, in the shape of Shaun Manchester, of the British Occult Society. I felt a huge sense of mingled national pride and relief on hearing that this august body had decided to take on the vampire menace in his lair. What some bunch of foreign Johnny occultists would make of the banishment rituals Sean proposed to use in his fight against evil, I wouldn’t care to speculate on. After a lot of shuffling around the elegant catacombs and elaborate tombs, intoning prayers for the evil one to leave, we were left with a rather weary document showing the decrepit state of the once beautiful cemetery, and the strength of belief, however misguided or misdirected, in the afterlife, by the dramatis personae, both seen and unseen.

To round off, we had the evening’s only fictional item, albeit based upon an accepted legend, in 1980’s ‘Leap in the Dark: The Living Grave’. The story of a young girl, pregnant and abandoned by her lover, seeks refuge in barns, almshouses, and farms, not always with the permission of the owners. The twist is that the story is played out in the present day, via a young girl taking part in a scientific experiment reliving her past life as this unfortunate young girl. With plenty of chills, and a superb performance by Lesley Dunlop, it provided a counterpoint to much of the hokum, which preceded it.

Scenester
The Bed Sitting Room at the NFT 21/5/09

In these days of the ‘hit, git and split’ approach to filmmaking, a film’s title has to say it all to its perceived audience. Today’s filmmakers seem to feel that there’s no sense in using a ‘clever’ or ‘oblique’ title if what they basically have is the second instalment of a superhero’s adventures, or another romcom with one of the cast of ‘Friends’ in it. It’s with this in mind that the casual viewer might get completely the wrong impression from the bare bones of this film.

Title: ‘The Bed Sitting Room’

Made: In the 60’s

Cast: Rita Tushingham, Ralph Richardson et al

Anyone, perhaps reasonably, expecting a ‘kitchen sink’ drama will end up very puzzled and surprised by this surreal, post-apocalyptic offering from the closing years of that golden decade. Once again, the ‘Flipside’ team have come up with three ‘Bars’ and a replay on the cinematic one-armed bandit, in securing a gorgeous print of this long neglected film for us to rave over, and hot on its heels, a DVD release for those who can’t make the trip to London’s South Bank or who were indisposed that night-good excuses only, now!

I had seen this crazy, witty, profound but hopeful film only once before, on television sometime in the late 70’s/early 80’s, and even then it struck me how strangely it resembled 1972’s ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’, with which it shares many cast members, and its general atmosphere of Carollian absurdity, its characters forced by remote, grandiose authority figures to behave logically in an illogical world.

The action takes place a year or so after the nuclear holocaust (referred to here with typical politician’s understatement as ‘an unfortunate incident’), and the UK appears to have only about 20 people left alive in it. Her Majesty The Queen and her entire family were some of the victims of the ‘misunderstanding’ and her ‘nearest’ relative, Mrs Ethel Shroake, her former tea-lady, has been elevated to the that historic office, as being the person closest to her. Her country now resembles a landscape of slag heaps and rubbish dumps, in which her cast of wretched, wandering subjects attempt to return to their pre-apocalypse lives, clinging to their traditions, as far as they can. A family are eking out an existence on the London Underground system, with Father (ever-reliable Arthur Lowe) raiding platform sited chocolate machines with his trusty axe and Mother (the perfectly cast Mona Washbourne) tends to the needs of her 17-months pregnant daughter
Penelope (Rita Tushingham, delightful as ever). Henry Woolf, provides power for the ailing Underground system in his role as the entire Electricity Board, pedalling like fury with his bicycle dynamo hooked up to the mains.

The first intimations that radiation poisoning are beginning to show, are touched on in the characters who have become obsessive about their former occupations, and some are even slowly mutating into human-object hybrids. Most memorable of the obsessives, is Marty Feldman as a sinister nurse, peering out of his (her?) binoculars for new patients, sick or well, willing or not! Lord Fortnum (Ralph Richardson, again perfect casting) in his best city gent attire, refusing to believe the class system has broken down and impelled only by his desire to get back on top where he belongs. His Lordship’s chauffeur is slowly mutating into a car, his shoulders bearing a very Mod-like array of wing mirrors, his breast covered by metal ‘Morris’ badges, prefiguring the mutants that would later turn up in such films as ‘Mad Max’ and ‘Beneath the Planet of the Apes’.

In case this is beginning to sound like a festival of misery, I should tell you that ‘The Bed Sitting Room’ is infused strongly with the untrammelled absurdism that made Spike Milligan such a pivotal figure in British Comedy. Originally co-written with John Antrobus for the stage in the early 60’s, and where it was a great success, the decision to take a story that was, by 1968, a little less pertinent to the state of the world’s politics must have been a difficult one for the producers to justify to their backers. I’m pleased they persuaded them, however, as the result is a remarkable piece of surreal pantomime and a very worthy addition o the already packed CV of its director, Richard Lester.

The story proceeds at its own refreshingly undisciplined pace, presenting us with characters who would have been perfectly at home in that other priceless creation of the mind of Spike Milligan, ‘The Goon Show’. Spike reprises his William ‘Mate’ Cobblers role from that brilliant radio show, a Beckettian tramp who turns up to burst the bubble of pomposity by his somewhat literal interpretations of others’ instructions.

‘I’d like that picture hanging there’ says Captain Bules Martin (Michael Hordern). ‘Mate’ duly obliges by hanging the picture on the Captain’s fingernail.

Two petty officials stalk the country in a rusty police car, supported by a hot air balloon, their officious characters played by the much missed Dudley Moore and Peter Cook. ‘Keep moving’ they solemnly intone through their megaphones to the poor, bedraggled populace, as if moving would do them any good.

With such a low survival rate to the nuclear misunderstanding, it is perhaps hardly surprising that we encounter The Army, played with ingenious schizophrenic brio
by Ronald Fraser, one side of his uniform a Field Marshal, the other a Sergeant, relentlessly barking orders at and between his two selves.

Frank Thornton is an early face in the film, playing ‘The BBC’, an announcer in a tattered dinner suit (waist up only), delivering his news announcements personally by sitting behind an empty television set box, at the water’s edge. The scene is highly reminiscent of the opening scene to many Monty Python episodes, which were only a few years away in time.

For an artist who never forgot to acknowledge his debt to those who inspired him, like The Marx Brothers and Buster Keaton, it’s sometimes a surprise that more writers in the absurdist tradition don’t always acknowledge their debt to Spike. Shows like ‘Monty Python’s Flying Circus’ would have been unthinkable without the groundwork lay down by Spike. I would go so far as to say that the entire face of British Comedy would have been very different had this Irish/Indian nurtured genius never been born.

Encountering more unique and wildly outré characters along the way, our family, now with a very Mod boyfriend in tow (Richard Warwick) for Penelope to amuse herself with, finally find their way out of the decaying London Underground system, a situation that many of the tonight’s audience can clearly identify with. They find themselves on the shore of the polluted Thames, the daughter pursued by Captain Bules Martin, eager to carry on his family line with Rita Tushingham’s character as his unwitting bride for this other, down on his luck toff. The unfortunate Lord Fortnum has mutated into the Bed Sitting Room of the title, to his eternal shame. He was on his way to Belgravia at the time, in the hope of transforming into an elegant mansion. Wistful absurdity is cranked up well beyond the point of believability as Mona Washbourne, having already detected a Dali-esque wooden drawer in her chest, later morphs into a cupboard, blending in perfectly within the Bed Sitting Room. Arthur Lowe’s ‘Father’ is slowly mutating into a parrot, all within the confines of what appears to be a stage set for a Samuel Beckett play.

The later, hilarious marriage, post-pregnancy, of Captain Bules Martin to Penelope by an underwater Vicar (Jack Shepherd), brilliantly realised with the aid of an altar that more resembles a top-sliding cocktail cabinet, complete with cross and candlesticks inside, gave me another laugh-out-loud moment before the film’s climax. Mrs Ethel Shroake is hailed as Her Majesty the Queen, the two petty officials return, this time Dudley Moore has morphed into a particularly mangy border collie, but with Peter Cook manoeuvring himself into position as a possible future leader, appropriate for a man whose family were expecting him to enter high Civil Service office! We close on a hopeful note, with Penelope reunited with her mod boyfriend as a new spring is beginning to rise, grass and flowers poking through the wreckage and waste of the slagheap landscape.

This work of fiction/future shock drama is suffused throughout with the off-kilter humour of its principal writer, but never as just a device for mere amusement. Spike’s concern for the fate of the world, and his common humanitarianism shines through the characters and their words, right through to the new dawn at the close of the film, so often missing from the later apocalyptic films of the 1970’s and early 1980’s. It is this that made Spike such a uniquely fascinating and hugely likeable writer and person, but I’m digressing, and I think that will have to be the subject of a different article.

The screening was followed by a brief ‘Q&A’ with Richard Lester and Rita Tushingham, both of whom were sprightly and full of enthusiasm for the film they made over thirty years ago, It is very difficult to believe that so many years have passed, as they have left no mark whatever on the star’s instantly recognisable features, and the director’s attitude and enthusiasm still sparkle for what was basically a financially unsuccessful film. Richard patiently answered questions about his,
sometimes unpredictable, career path, recalling how difficult it was to drum up support for subsequent projects after the Bed Sitting Room’s less than exciting showing at the box-office. The fact that the owners of the completed film ‘ummed and aahed’ until its final release, to little fanfare two years later, could not have helped its chances of recouping its modest cost. Richard recalled it was not until the mid-1970’s that he had a box office success again, with ‘The Three Musketeers’ Our ‘Q&A’ was so unfortunately brief, that not ever your friend and writer could shoehorn a query in, but the packed audience, including several high profile Mods of my acquaintance, went away very happy, and I’m sure the film’s reputation will only grow with its new-found DVD release.

Once again, huge thanks to the Flipsiders for coming up trumps and finding this gem of a film, but more importantly, securing its DVD release.

Scenester
Horror Hospital at the NFT Thursday 25/6/09

A scorching hot day on the South Bank of the Thames, bright, bright sunshine reflecting off the concrete and a bottle of Australian Chardonnay to sustain us, me and my good lady picked our way to the NFT with two fellow mod era film fanatics to see The Flipside’s latest Brit Exploitation offering. With my admittedly limited knowledge of Anthony Balch’s film output, and my expectations a little on the low side I was surprised to learn what a varied career this director had. Starting out with the type of ‘beatnik’ films familiar to those of you who were regulars at the late, lamented Scala Cinema at London’s King’s Cross, he was one director who seemed to remain on the fringes of filmmaking, with Horror Hospital representing some sort of stab at a more popular genre. The supporting shorts ‘Towers Open Fire’ and ‘Kronhausen’s Psychomontage No 1’, presented us with a typically free-form cut up of dissonant conversation and surreal situations, the former starring everyone’s favourite junkie uncle, William Burroughs and his stoned, disjointed ramblings. All made in the UK, they offered a peek into a world usually closed to the casual filmgoer and member of the public, and one he or she may not necessarily enjoy.

Balch made only a few films in his short career, the last one being ‘Horror Hospital’, a traditional shocker with a comedy base that is anything but healthy. The plot is as familiar as it could be; a young couple, thrown together by chance on a train, find themselves in a sinister hospital, run by a criminally insane Finnish Doctor with an obsession with young people’s sexual behaviour. His deluded experiments have led to production of a zombie-like state in his subjects, the failures and escapees being dispatched by a fiendish blade secreted in the roof of his limousine, beheading them at a stroke. Played to icy perfection by Michael Gough, who is the only deliberately creepy character in the film, wheelchair bound and assisted by Skip Martin, another familiar face from the 70’s, his diminutive stature helping to draw sympathy from the audience at his cruel treatment from the unpleasant medic. The young couple are Robin Askwith, whose bare behind is probably just as familiar to cinemagoers of the 70’s as is his face, and Vanessa Shaw, playing his lust object, Biba-booted and possessing all of the attributes you would expect of a girl in a horror film of this period. A storyline that takes us through a familiar landscape of science gone bad eventually being destroyed by the forces of good (young people and their carefree attitude to life) takes us back into the normal world, with a jokey shock at the end-of course.

To those of you who are not familiar with the UK horror/comedy genre, the nearest parallel would appear to be the USA’s The Evil Dead, what with blood inexplicably appearing from the bathroom taps, and strange, bloody bed sheets dismissed by the hospital staff with an aside; ‘I hope you’ll be tidier than the last people who had that room’. There is also some common ground with the previous night’s NFT offering, ‘The Damned’, in that both films seem to be having difficulty deciding what sort of genre they are destined for. In ‘The Damned’s’ case, it was a toss-up between Biker/SciFi/future Shock, in Horror Hospital, Sick Comedy/Sexy-Light/Full on Horror, but this was many years before shows like ‘The League of Gentlemen’ and ‘Psychoville, and their cheerful mixing of genres and multi-layered storylines.

As a piece of Brit Exploitation, it works beautifully; there’s blood and guts for the gorehounds, a flash of flesh for the lechers, ‘Carry-On’ style laughs for the Saturday Night fun seekers and undertones of Nazi – style atrocities for the sicker and more twisted intellectual crowd. It didn’t win any Oscars, can hardly be looked on as a classic, but for those who love vicarious thrills, belly laughs and a touch of sleaze, there’s plenty here to amuse, and the film’s long availability on VHS/DVD will ensure its survival far better than if it was trying to court serious approval somewhere. It underlines why it is important not to accept only the scrawny offerings of a lot of modern mainstream cinema, but to cast the net a little further. A backward glance to that potent era of the late 60’s/early 70’s, when UK cinema was still capable of delivering a fun night at your local flea-pit; so thanks to Vic and Will Flipsider, for giving it a well-deserved big screen airing here.

Scenester

The Damned (1961) NFT1 Wednesday 24/6/09

I’m rapidly coming to the conclusion that I don’t know a thing about the cinema. Either that, or my memory is playing me up. My reason for booking to see this film was basically that I thought that I had seen it many years ago on a late night TV showing and wanted to see if it lived up to my memory of it. Even ‘memory’ is a misnomer, as all I could remember was a scene on a beach with Oliver Reed and his biker cohorts cavorting with a girl. Some things just stick in your mind, as the song goes!

The opening scene looked promising, with a shot of a beach and the early appearance of a bike gang, Oliver Reed playing their leader. There the resemblance ended, however, and we were plunged into one of the most off-kilter, creepy and plain sick sci-fi movies of the period. Several story lines are in evidence here, starting with the gang of bikers and their female lure, the lovely Shirley Ann Field, enticing strangers down lonely alleys, then beating and robbing them. The second, a tale of friendship between a ‘man from the ministry’ and a middle aged sculptress who rents a cliffside property from her friend. The property gives her the quiet and solitude she needs to create her tortured sculptures, made from driftwood and other reclaimed materials. The third, and most disquieting, is about a group of children being educated in isolation in a secret underground bunker, subjects of our ‘man from the ministry’.

It is the sometimes far from seamless stitching of these separate strands of the storylines that most intrigues you, and at the same time, throws you off-balance with its tracking from one to the next. The initial shot of the assault on a visiting middle-aged American academic contains a wealth of detail about England in the 1960’s. Filmed in Weymouth, where Victorian gentility sits side by side with the modern, the sight of virtually traffic-free roads and stylish, well-kept shop windows were as refreshing as they were beautifully photographed. The bikers, including a young Kenneth Cope, are a little on the soft side and are inexplicably led by Oliver Reed, resplendent in a hounds tooth check jacket. Reed cuts a robust Mod figure, toting a rolled umbrella, which he uses to hook round his victims’ throats prior to delivering them a beating. His sister (Shirley Ann Field) plays the bait for his traps, but she resents her brother using her in this way, even offering an explanation for his possessive behaviour; she feels he doesn’t let her have boyfriends because he’s never had a girlfriend.

A contemporary interview with the director, Joseph Losey, revealed that he felt he had had both Field and Reed imposed on him, and that Reed was ‘untrained’. I can’t claim any credentials as a casting director, but I’ve seen Oliver reed in countless films, and he never disappoints, as in this one. He plays the despicable but psychologically flawed thug to perfection, evoking an atmosphere that would have to wait a good few years to make its reappearance in films I prefer to call the ‘Violence 2000’ genre, like ‘A Clockwork Orange’.

Our lure decides to make a break for it, joining the American on his yacht, and they end up on a lonely stretch of beach, taking advantage of an empty house, already seemingly familiar to the American, no doubt from previous amorous encounters. It is of course our solitary sculptress’ house. However, the cliffs outside hold a surprise, and they get stuck in a cave when the tide comes in. It is here that the sci-fi element kicks in, as our stranded lovers are rescued by a group of children who are shocked to discover that the adults have warm skin. The adults are equally shocked at how cold the children are, and they quickly realise that the children are being held here as part of some experiment, eventually finding that their jailer is our man form the ministry.

If the title of the film hasn’t already reminded you of  ‘Children of the Damned’, then these scenes with the children will. However, it differs from that classic of the ‘Soft Apocalypse’ genre, in that the relatively benign adult hero of ‘Children’ has no obvious parallel here. We learn that the children were all born to mothers who had been exposed to radiation, and are unable to live except in the rarefied atmosphere of the bunker. Our man from the ministry has been charged with the grim duty of bringing up the children to repopulate the earth after the seemingly inevitable nuclear holocaust, their immunity to radiation ensuring their survival.

It’s a long way from a tepid biker movie to a sinister apocalyptic fable about the morality of nuclear research, child psychology and isolation, deliberate or otherwise. I’ve given away so much of the plot already, but I’ll leave you to decide the ending for yourselves.  It’s another film that seems to have been hiding away, in spite of the stellar reputation of its director, but it must surely find a wider audience one day. Thanks to the NFT for digging this one out of the catacombs for a well-deserved and welcome showing.

Scenester
Joanna at the NFT 23/7/09 incl. Q&A with Mike Sarne, Director

In their quest for the offbeat, outlandish and downright weird, Vic & Will Flipside routinely ransack the lesser-visited corners of the archives. This particular presentation intrigued me not only because of the irresistible 60’s Swingin’ London setting, but also because I had not heard of it before. The promise of a Q&A with the film’s director, Mike Sarne, guaranteed my attendance.

After a relaxing early evening on the South Bank, we made our way over to the NFT, meeting our friends M & K, regular Flipsiders themselves, ready for the 60’s film that appears to have got away.

As we learnt from Mike, the basic idea for ‘Joanna’ came from a true story, about a notorious shoplifter and party girl, who used to keep her ill-gotten gains in a left luggage locker at a central London train station. The script was pitched to potential backers on the back of the reflected success of Mike’s previous feature, which played support to the popular ‘Our Man Flint’. 20th Century Fox picked up the option on Joanna, awash with the staggering success of ‘The Sound of Music’ and duly handed Mike $1m, and carte blanche with it. This may have been a rash decision in retrospect, as the end product is lengthy, rambling, alternately joyous and pathetic, and sometimes a little difficult to swallow.

The scene is set with our heroine (Genevieve Waite) arriving by train and moving to her aunt’s house in London, ostensibly to treat the place like a hotel. She goes about her business, studying art during the day and getting in some serious partying at night, along the way meeting a familiar collection of stock contemporary characters as doomed aristocrats, thuggish club owners and upper crust eccentrics, all of whom possess a great deal of charm, but few of them exactly the marriage material she craves.

Musically, the film is a mini treasure-trove for fans of slightly left-field 60’s music, with Scott Walker’s beautiful ‘When Joanna loved me’ and some specially written songs by Rod McKuen, a personal favourite.

This being a 60’s film, setting and costume are paramount, but the shots of a rather quiet- looking London (Sunday filming schedule?) and some suspiciously conservative outfits for the young characters come as a surprise. This isn’t to say that there is a lack of 60’s pizzazz, however. With Genevieve Waite’s model-girl figure (Twiggy was mooted as the lead, according to Mike) any outfit would be a stunner, receiving no competition from her dowdy student pals, posh beatniks all of them. It is however the men in the film who are the true peacocks (nothing changes) and Joanna’s Sierra Leonian boyfriend, Gordon (Calvin Lockhart) has a selection of bold suits (one in white!) frilly shirts and dandyish hats that would have easily passed muster in one of the following decade’s Blaxploitation epics. Gordon’s style is very much the urban pimp, even if his real job is in the comparatively respectable world of nightclub management.

Joanna and Gordon have a mutual friend, in the shape of Lord Peter Sanderson, played by the great Donald Sutherland and so far over the top, he’s practically in the stratosphere. Mike explained that they could not coax an aristocratic English accent out of Sutherland for the role-and considering the character’s and the actor’s name, they might have been better off with an aristocratic Scottish one-but they did not have time to lip-sync a substitute, so the ‘flirty John Betjeman playing Pooh Bear’ enunciation remained. What Sutherland may have lacked in the vocal department was more than made up for in the characterisation, with his hilariously camp manners and magpie appreciation of every pleasurable experience his privileged life could throw at him. We learn that his butterfly like lifestyle is soon to come to an end, as he is suffering from a wasting illness that lays him to rest, just as Joanna is beginning to fall for him.

Joanna’s chaotic journey thorough her young life takes her to many places, among them an abortion clinic, where a friend is receiving the tender mercies of the staff  for a second (third?) time, and many art gallery openings and parties populated by more unsuitables who ultimately leave her wanting to settle down with her now fugitive club owner boyfriend. The film ends with, of all things, a chorus line (sadly without Donald Sutherland) doing a traditional style show-stopper on the railway platform, as Joanna leaves for home.

As I think you can probably tell, I wasn’t overly impressed with this meandering film, and its value, as a time capsule of 60’s style and manners, is also a little suspect. However, without these works, made in the heart of the moment, and without the censorious voices that often ruined larger productions, we would all be a lot poorer for entertainment. Our co-travellers on the engine Flipside, M & K, seemed to be of the same opinion, none of us in a great hurry to see it again.

Mike Sarne fielded some questions from Will & Vic and the audience afterwards, cheerfully recalling how critics and public alike hated his next film, Myra Breckinridge, almost as much as they hated ‘Joanna’. More interesting, was Mike’s stories of his background before making films, in the world of commercials, and I think there is definitely scope for a new Mod parlour game, guessing which 60’s adverts were his work. I have my eye on a particularly silly gangster pastiche, advertising butter, I saw on a DVD compilation. Mike was more than willing to talk about the process of pitching a film, and his earlier success with ‘B-pictures’ set him on the road to a full-blown directorial career. No mention of ‘Come Outside’, however.

I’ll have to turn in a slightly negative verdict on this one, but I’m looking forward to the Flipside’s next screening, ‘Penny Points To Paradise’, in a couple of days’ time, and of course their regular monthly slots at the NFT.

Scenester
The meteoric career of Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp, film makers turned pop group managers, hustlers and outcasts is the subject of a film,  tautly directed by James D. Cooper, and coming your way in May.
24/2/15
http://www.modculture.co.uk/lambert-stamp-2015/

‘I Start Counting’ (1969) with Jenny Agutter Q & A NFT2 21/7/11
The subject matter, on the surface salacious, is however handled with extraordinary sensitivity by all involved. There are so many moments of levity in the girls’ exchanges about the inevitable subject of sex, and their precocious questions about it to the visiting priest at school, is a real gem of a scene.

We spot the enormous red herring of the film long before this scene, but the true identity of the killer is hinted at early on, and comes as little surprise later on. I am not so mean that I would reveal any more, but I will say that anyone thinking they are getting a routine stalk & slasher, or a feast of young flesh, will walk away disappointed. The film contains elements of both, but the quality of the acting; the excellent script and the sure direction keep it from descending into the morass of low-end exploitation cinema. Instead, we have a tense, engaging picture of the unbearable trials of adolescent life, and young peoples’ ability to adapt and cope in the most trying and dangerous circumstances.

Scenester
4/8/11
That Was The Week That Was:
The Anti-Establishment Club & Clips
NFT 27/11/12
16/12/12