Beat Girl (Wild for Kicks).

“Psychologists think most human neurosis comes from too much contact with other human beings” so says wealthy Paul Lindon (David Farrar) who has just brought his new French wife Nichole (French actress Noelle Adam) home following their wedding in Paris. The 24-year-old French beauty is only half the prominent architects age, something that strikes home when she meets Paul’s daughter, the rebellious Jennifer (Brigette Bardot wonnabee Gillian Hills), who immediately takes a dislike to her stepmother. The large austere family home that all three now share has few homely attractions. Jennifer describes it as a morgue with Nichole commenting on the houses barrenness - all of which does not help its repressive constraining atmosphere. 

 

Brigette Bardot wonnabee Gillian Hills.

The films narrative centres on the relationship between the two women and an area of London known as Soho. Nichole has a past to hide that involves an old friend called Greta (B-Movie actress Delphi Lawrence) who is the star performer at a strip club owned by her boyfriend Kenny King (Christopher Lee taking a break from Hammer Films). Jennifer’s frequents the Soho Coffee Bars where mainly spoilt little rich kids hang out listening and dancing to ‘cool decadent jazz’. They include the obligatory working class lad Dave (good use of pop singer Adam Faith in his first film, although his second movie, along side girlfriend of the time Carol White, Never Let Go (1960) had already been released), Tony, a general’s son whose mother was killed in the Blitz, who drinks to much (played by Peter McEnery also in his debut movie, an actor who had a prominent role in Victim in 1961 along side Dirk Bogarde) and Tony’s well bred girlfriend Dodo (Shirley Anne Field who famously played Arthur Seaton’s girlfriend Doreen in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960))   

 

A cool crowd in Chislehurst Caves.

Directed by French filmmaker Edmond T Greville Beat Girl (1960) or as it was known in the USA Wild for Kicks, is a product of its time with its dodgy script and terrible corny dialog. There were small roles for Oliver Reed and Carol White and a larger one for Nigel Green, best known for his role as Colonel Ross in The Ipcress File (1965) and who also appeared in a range of British movies including the thriller The Man Who Finally Died (1963) alongside Stanley Baker. Also making his debut was composer John Barry with his first movie commission. Incidentally the films soundtrack was the first to be released on a LP (a large piece of vinyl with a picture cover!). Filmed at the MGM-British Film Studios at Borehamwood Hertfordshire its location shooting took place in Soho London with club scenes filmed in the Chislehurst Caves in Kent, Southern England.

 

An audition takes place in a late 1950's Soho strip joint.... 

....where its owner the late Christopher Lee interrogates Gillian Hills.   

 This was another of these films’ that received critically bad reviews but was popular with cinemagoers. It had problems with the censor that delayed its general release. The setbacks were down to displays of topless nudity and strip tease along with scenes of juvenile delinquency involving public road racing and ‘playing’ chicken on a railway line!  The movie was eventually given an adult only “X” certificate; thankfully my copy of the DVD was the uncut version that certainly made it a more appealing piece of British cinematic history.        

Tommy.

Where do you begin when writing about a musical that sets the bar so high that no one has managed to reach it?  It starts with the birth of a young wartime baby, whose father is thought to have perished in a RAF bombing mission over Germany. When the lad is six his mother meets Frank at a holiday camp, Uncle Frank Hobbs (Oliver Reed) soon moves in with Nora Walker (Ann-Margret). One night while Frank and Nora are making love the boys father returns and witnesses the love making, the young boy witnesses the fight that follows, which ends with Captain Walker (Robert Powell) being killed. His mother and stepfather tell the boy "you didn't hear it, you didn't see it, you won't say nothing to no-one". From that day on young Tommy Walker (Roger Daltrey) hears nothing, see’s nothing and says nothing, in fact he’s now psychologically blind, deaf and dumb. Yes you’re right this is Ken Russell’s truly inspired adaptation of Pete Townsend’s 1969 rock opera Tommy (1975).

 

Eyesight to the Blind.

Both Nora and Frank attempt, via various doctors, to cure the boy of his malaise but without any success. Moving on ten years and the pair still believe that the boy can be cured, this time by taking him to a gathering of the faithful in a church that worships the cult of Marilyn Monroe. To the music of Sonny Boy Williamson’s Eyesight to the Blind a cleansing is taking place where a sacrament of drugs and alcohol is being served under the control of a preacher, who looks remarkable like Eric Clapton and a priest who you’d swear was Arthur Brown. When that does not work the next stop is a visit to the Acid Queen (Tina Turner) a prostitute who administers LSD, she sends Tommy on a ‘trip’ of a lifetime but still it does not bring back his senses. After a couple of unsavoury episodes involving a Cousin Kevin (Paul Nicholas) and an Uncle Ernie (Keith Moon) and a strange occurrence in a scrapyard its discovered that the deaf, dumb and blind kid can sure play a mean pinball beating the local champ, a Pinball Wizard played by Elton John who wears the famous giant pair of Doc Martins. This changes all their lives with Nora and Frank cashing in on Tommy’s messiah status. I could go on with the story but I think you’ve got the idea, suffice to say the scene with the inspirationally cast Ann-Margret and the beans is worth your admission money all by its self. Russell said that this scene was a revenge parody of real life TV advertisements he had directed early in his career!

 

The Acid Queen.

The movie deals with some pretty serious matters like the cult of fame, drugs, and prejudice towards the disabled and sexual abuse. I first saw this film on release but I must admit I’d forgotten how good it was, seeing it recently on a rare screening on the BBC. The film has no dialogue at all, its narrative is carried solely by the words and music of Townsend and the Who and the episodic cinematography directed with great flair and imagination by Russell.  This combination of the eccentricities of Townsend’s writing and Ken Russell direction show how modern day musical’s should be made, with class and that slightly off kilter humour that the director is famous for rather than the dull conformity that appeases the majority of the culturally dead masses who revel in the mediocrity of such films as Mamma Mia (2008).

Ken we really miss you -  more than ever these day’s. 

The Devils.

Sister Jeanne.

In 1971 three infamous films were released. Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange an adaptation of Anthony Burgess’s 1962 novel, a fascinating political commentary on violence and youth withdrawn by Kubrick for a period of 27 years, although it could be purchased from Europe and from 2000 freely available in this country again uncut. The psychological thriller Straw Dogs directed by the legendary Sam Peckinpah was accused of the debasement of women because of the prolonged rape scene that is at the centre of the film. But the most famous release of that year, and one that’s probably coursed more controversy than the other two put together, is Ken Russell’s masterwork The Devils.  Not only was this film cut by the BBFC but also on the insistence of Warner Brothers the studio that had created it. In its uncut state it would have never been released but the cuts that were made before it could be released in America ruined it completely. Thanks to the BFI we can at least now view the original British X-rated version in the comfort of our own homes, perhaps one day we will be able to see the full directors cut with the complete rape of Christ scene reinstated.

Father Grandier.

Russell based his film on two source’s, Aldous Huxley’s 1952 historical narrative The Devils of Loudon which it self was based on actual events and the 1960 play by John Whiting The Devils, which took Huxley’s researches as it basis. In 17^th century France in the town of Loudun an entire convent of Ursuline nuns came to believe that they had been overwhelmed by witchcraft and sorcery, resulting in mass exorcisms which climaxed in the public burning of the priest Urbain Grandier who was accused of seducing the nuns and being in league with the devil.  The accepted version of events, at least in Russell’s movie, is that the nuns affliction, said to be caused by an LSD like chemical ergot found in the nuns bread, were deliberately whipped up by politicians and priests to unseat Grandier who was encouraging the citizens of Loudun to stand firm against centralised government. Cardinal Richelieu wanted to eliminate Huguenot fortified strongholds. It was Grandier who rallied both Catholics and Protestant residents to stand up to Jean de Laubardemont when he arrived in Loudun to oversee the demolition of its walls and castle. When this was reported back to the Cardinal he set out to remove Grandier at all costs.

The Nuns !

The Devils is Ken Russell’s only political film, made as a bold attack on the marriage of church and state. He has affirmed publically that he never intended it as a sacrilegious film. Along with his wife Shirley, Ken had converted to Catholicism in the late 1950’s therefore confirming that ‘he knew a bit about the background’ but this did not stop socially conservative pressure groups such as the Festival of Light, a semi Fascist organisation concerned about the new found sexual freedoms of the late 1960’s, from lobbying the BBFC.

Sister Jeanne licks Grandier's wounds.

But whatever the controversy you can’t get away from the fact that this was a ground breaking piece of work that tackled political, sexual and religious corruption head on.  A film of imagination that brought together the skills of a director at the height of his talent, British cinematographer David Watkins who was among the first directors of photography to experiment with the usage of bounce light as a soft light source, the fledgling Derek Jarman who designed the wonderful fortified Protestant town in its entirety in Pinewood studios and the current master of the Queens Music Sir Peter Maxwell Davies who composed and conducted the score.   The two main leads are Vanessa Redgrave who played Sister Jeanne the deformed erotically obsessed nun and Russell regular Oliver Reed as Father Urbain Grandier in what I would suggest was the best performance of his career.

The Authorities finally get their own way.

As Mark Kermode says in his introduction to the new release ‘it remains a genuinely breath-taking work, the jewel in the crown of Russell’s magnificent career; a film which was a head of its time forty years ago and which (like its creator) never lost the power to enthral and enrage in equal measure’ and I would add that its never lost it’s visual style or its ability to shock.

The Party’s Over

Guy Hamilton, born in Paris to English parents, learnt his directorial trade working as an assistant to Carol Read on movies like The Third Man (1949) he went on to direct, amongst many other things, four James Bond movies between 1964 and 1974 and the more down to earth spy drama written by Len Deighton, which starred Michael Caine as Harry Palmer, the1966 classic Funeral in Berlin. In 1962 he directed the controversial cult movie The Party’s Over, which in fact was not released until 1965 and because of the mauling it got in the editing stage Hamilton withdrew his name from the film. The problem at the time was the inadvertent scenes of necrophilia that proved far to sensational for the Rank Organisations respectable image! Again thanks to BFI’s Flipside series (See Joanna (1968) and Lunch Hour (1963)) we have a chance to see this film in all its uncut spender!

In all honesty these days its content would not raise an eyebrow. The somewhat melodramatic story involves a group of intellectual dropouts known collectively as “beatniks”. These self-indulgent degenerates came from the middle classes and above and tended to live for the moment without giving a thought for anyone or anything (a bit like Thatcherism?) The rich, spoilt American Melina (Louise Sorel) is attracted to the life style, catching the attention of the group’s contemptuous and scornful leader Moise (the equally contemptuous and scornful Oliver Reed) which in turn invites jealousy from other members of the group both male and female: two tragic deaths result. On its release critics and audiences alike rejected it but now in hindsight it’s like other films of the sixties, fascinating with a certain period charm. The film also boasts a great John Barry soundtrack, which for Jazz lovers is a real bonus.

The Damned

British poster.

H L Lawrence’s novel The Children of Light told of a secret government experiment to cultivate a group of cold-blooded radioactive children to inhabit a contaminated earth in the aftermath of a nuclear war. With the encouragement of Hammers Michael Carreras, who wanted the production company to diversify from it’s reliance on gothic horror, Joseph Losey was persuaded to make a film based on Lawrence’s novel. Added to the novel’s basic British science fiction premise was “teenage rebellion” including a teddy boy/rocker gang lead by King (Oliver Reed) whose sister Joan (the lovely Shirley Anne Field Arthur Seaton’s love interest in 1960’s Saturday Night-Sunday Morning) uses her obvious sexual charms to lure American tourist Simon Wells (Macdonald Carey) into a mugging where he is beaten and robbed by her evil brother and his gang. This attack leads to Joan and Simon having an affair which narratively speaking leads to the discovery of the secret experiments and the children who, like their counterparts in the recent Never Let Go (2010), are innocent victims of a self serving ruthless ruling class. Stanley Kubrick used the same premise in 1971’s A Clockwork Orange in as much as questionable activities by both an extreme youth movement and the even more dangerous “authorities”.

American poster.

The movie, filmed on location in Weymouth and nearby Portland Bill, was originally made in 1961 but due to political considerations was not released until 1963 in the UK and 1965 in the USA where it went under the title of These Are The Damned. When viewing this film today it must be remembered that in the early 60’s many considered a nuclear war inevitable at a time when the Cuban missile crisis was at its height. Even the sculptures made by Freya Nielsen (Swedish actress Viveca Lindfors) were made to represent bodies of people and animals killed by a nuclear blast. (They were actually made by British sculptor Elisabeth Frink) Losey’s film, fascinating and menacing, captures the edgy nature of living with the threat of nuclear oblivion and is now can be regarded as one of the best of Hammers Films.

For more Joseph Losey follow link:

http://brianmatthews60.blogspot.com/search/label/Joseph Losey