SEASON OF THE WITCH (1970)

May’s cultural highlight came yesterday at the NFT for the Flipside screening of Season of the Witch, a BBC Wednesday Play made in the summer of ’69 with Julie Driscoll playing Mel who runs away from London, her parents, and her job and heads to Brighton. There she meets various “beats” (interestingly there are plenty of references to beats and beatniks – no one is a freak or hippie) and they mooch about doing very little.

Mel takes tips on scavenging for food (get a skinny dog and plead with the butcher for meat) and sleeping on the beach before hitch hiking to Cornwall, traipsing back to London for a rally, getting arrested, moving on again, getting a pad with Jake (Paul Nicholas) and Shaun (Robert Powell), and upping sticks again.

With plentiful location shots, unscripted segments of dialogue, a few “what’s it all about?” moments mixed with genuine interviews and footage (greasy bespectacled longhairs arguing half cocked political idealism and watching drug education films at a youth drop-in centre), Season of the Witch is as much sympathetic coming of age documentary as it is Beat Girl On The Road. As such, it’s aged well. Da yoof may not say “scenes” and “pads” anymore but the spirit can’t be much different.

Julie Driscoll is a far better singer than actress but the role suited: neither ditzy dolly bird nor down at the heel desperado; it made a change to see a portrayal of a together, likeable and eminently sensible young woman in a 60s film.

The best line came from Mel’s Dad (played by Glynn Edwards, better known as Dave from the Winchester Club in Minder), who in a long rant about the state of young people today said “I saw one of ‘em the other day wearing cowboy hat. In ‘arrow. There ain’t any cowboys in ‘arrow”. Director Desmond McCarthy gave a good Q&A session afterwards and explained all the lines in that monologue were taken from a real Panorama documentary. He also confirmed the sign in a B&B window of “We reserve the right to refuse beatniks and other undesirables” was also genuine.

Add to all that a soundtrack by Brian Auger and the Trinity and a bit of Blind Faith in Hyde Park and you’ve a real treasure that’s screaming out to be issued on DVD.

ALL THE RIGHT NOISES (1969), MAN OF VIOLENCE (1970) and HEROSTRATUS (1967)

When the BFI/Flipside rescued their latest three British films from cinematic obscurity and gave them a deluxe DVD release, the one that initially looked the most unappealing turned out a real treasure. That was Gerry O’Hara’s 1969 All The Right Noises.

It looked iffy due to the storyline of a 32 year old married man, Len (played by Tom Bell), having an affair with a 15 year old temptress, Val (Olivia Hussey – yes, I know what you’re thinking but I’m not saying it). I expected a heavy handed, sensationalistic shocker, when in fact it’s a thoughtful, well scripted, subtle and engaging drama with convincing performances from Bell and especially Hussey who is brilliantly cast.

When Len and Val meet and start getting fresh, Len is unaware of Val’s age but when he discovers her in her school uniform he protests for, oooh, seconds. And seconds is what he has. He is coldly untroubled by his deceit and brazenness, even getting Val to stay at his flat whilst his wife is away. When we see his missus on her way home early, the tension is so gripping you question why you even care if the dirty dog gets caught or not. Why’s that? I wasn’t counting on getting so involved. Val may have been skipping her homework but director and screenwriter Gerry O’Hara had obviously done his.

1960’s scenes showing smoking on the tube, Leicester Square station, Uxbridge station, Brighton beach, and the River Thames would usually be enough of a recommendation in itself but these are only added bonuses to a film already rich with layers and detail. Shame about Melanie caterwauling on the soundtrack but you can’t have everything.

The other two are Man of Violence (aka Moon) and Herostratus. Man of Violence is a 1970 gangster flick with little to redeem it beyond busty birds whipping off their bras and waddling around in big saggy knickers. I couldn’t follow the plot; the leading man had all the charisma and presence of a tea towel; and at 107 minutes it done me bleedin’ head in. If that weren’t bad enough it comes with a “bonus” film of The Big Switch (1968) which is more of the same except the collars, lapels and sideburns are half an inch narrower.

It’ll be a long time until I can sit through nearly two and half hours of Herostratus (1967) again, but by jingo, what a film. I know jack shit about films or the art of filmmaking but can recognize and appreciate sheer bloody minded passion and dedication when I see it and it pours out of Don Levy’s precise and frequently haunting and surrealistic film. Michael Gothard plays Max, who asks an advertising company to make a spectacle of his suicide, which they agree to with icy detachment, gradually taking more and more control over the one thing Max has left in life. We moan about celebrity culture and media spin nowadays yet this film was started 45 years ago and it was already prevalent then. Gothard’s portrayal of Max is terrifying, no more so than in the early scene where he manically smashes his flat to pieces with an axe. I’m thinking “oh, be careful, you’ll hurt yourself”. The film is spliced with all manner of hellish news footage, bizarre images, strippers, slaughtered cows and Francis Baconesque stills. An extraordinary film. That Don Levy committed suicide in 1987, followed by Michael Gothard in 1992, is no surprise.

www.bfi.org.uk

SEPARATION (1967)

Directed by Jack Bond, Separation is an obscure piece of experimental and highly original British cinema that’s managed to avoid the radar of almost everyone bar hardened film buffs since its release in 1967. The BFI have now released it on DVD.

It’s a difficult film to neatly categorise. Shot in black and white and largely cheerless; yet this is no kitchen sink drama. These characters are far too well-to-do: they eat in fancy restaurants, dress in high end fashions, drive groovy painted cars around the King’s Road, and shop in expensive department stores. Despite all this, plus the sound of Procol Harum and occasional snatch of technicoloured liquid oil projections over naked bodies, it’s not your typical Swinging London film either.

Reviews at the time varied from the Daily Mirror’s blunt “cinema bonkers” to the Observer’s more considered “astonishingly distressing and perceptive”. As is the way, it’s a bit of both but initial reaction veers more to bonkers as it’s tricky to figure out precisely who is who and what the devil is going on. It gradually makes more sense (particularly on second viewing) but its non-linear direction and its is-it-a-dream-or-is-it-not passages leave the viewer as confused and disorientated as the main character Jane (played by Jane Arden, who wrote the screenplay and original story), who dealing with the emotions stirred from the separation from her husband, her relationship with her young lover, and the death of her mother tumbles deeper into mental breakdown.

There are bags of stylistic tics and effects throughout the film, which is so beautifully shot it can be enjoyed purely aesthetically until the story slowly sinks in. The swimming pool sequence alone has to be seen to be believed.

As always with BFI releases the packaging is faultless with a 30 page booklet and many extras including a full-length commentary by Jack Bond who sheds useful light on the film, its background, and his relationship with Arden who took her own life in 1982.

Separation is released by BFI. www.bfi.org.uk

THE FLIPSIDE PRESENTS: JOANNA (1968)

Just when you think you’ve seen every Swinging London film, the Flipside team unearths a new one to show at the NFT.

I was trying to think how to describe it, when in the Q&A session afterward, director Mike Sarne offered advice on pitching films to secure funding. Investors, he said, rarely read beyond the first full stop so you’ve got to hook them straight away with something simple they’ll like and understand. Joanna was pitched as “the female Alfie”, and in many ways it is. But before you rub your hands in glee, it’s not as good as that.

Joanna breezes into technicolour London from her grey upbringing and sets about coldly pursuing the groovy London lifestyle via a string of liaisons with rich married men, artists, Lords and shady characters before becoming pregnant. Played by Genevieve Waite, Joanna accrues a dazzling wardrobe of 1968 outfits and looks foxy in a Twiggy way but talks in a ditzy, childlike voice meant to sound cute but is actually bleeding annoying. That makes the film difficult to take seriously – not that it’s a serious film by any stretch of the imagination, yet probably has a vaguely serious message in it somewhere about the pursuit of happiness.

There are great scenes of London streets, the Southbank (including one where she bangs the wall of the NFT), a shopping spree, cool fashions, an art exhibition, and the obligatory skipping through the pigeons in Trafalgar Square moment. Any 60s film with all that is worth watching but as a cross between Alfie and Darling it falls someway short of both.

THE FLIPSIDE PRESENTS THE ART OF EXPLOITATION: ANTONY BALCH NIGHT

“If there’s one thing I hate, it’s the movies. Don’t even mention them to me”. It’s a Holden Caulfield line I regurgitate with tedious monotony but the chaps at Flipside are causing me to wobble. Their nights at the British Film Institute/National Film Theatre, specialising in unearthing oddities and obscurities (mainly from the 1960s) are rapidly turning into must-do events. This month “The Art of Exploitation: Antony Balch Night”, showed three films; two he directed and one he contributed filming to.

Balch is best known (to me at least) for his work with William Burroughs and a BFI restored print of Towers Open Fire (above), their eleven minute 1963 cinematic cut-up was shown first. Together they made as close an approximation of reading one of Bill’s more challenging books as you could get. It jumps about, it repeats itself, it layers one image on top of another, it jumbles sights and sounds, it blurs, it bleeds, and it leaves the viewer disorientated. Balch also distributed porn films and would show them in his cinemas along with his experimental Burroughs work as the opening feature. Quite what the dirty mac brigade turning up to see The Kinky Darlings made of Bill shooting up and Balch having a Barclays is anyone’s guess, but for Burroughs enthusiasts Towers Open Fire is an invaluable record covering the people, places, themes and activities central to his creative highpoint during the late 50s and early 60s.

Another 1963 short Kronhausen’s Psychomontage No. 1 also mixes sights and sounds; this time “erotic” scenes and scenes of animals and fish with the soundtrack swopped. Unless I’m mistaken, a stocking clad young lady has sex with a dog in the park.

The nearest Balch came to directing a “normal” film was Horror Hospital (1973) starring Robin Askwith as a struggling pop star who books in to a health farm to get straight. Only all is not as it seems. Cue clap of thunder and lightning reflecting off the twisted face of Dr Storm, the knuckle-clicking, wheelchair-bound, evil scientist played by Michael Gough. Ha, ha, haaa. Storm lobotomises his guests and any trying to escape are decapitated by a sword wielding Rolls Royce driven by a dwarf. You get the picture. The acting is thick ham, the script clunky, the plot thin, the budget tiny, and the special effects stretched to a couple of tins of crimson paint. Yep, great fun. More by accident than design it was laugh out loud funny.

The next Flipside is on Thursday 23rd July with the screening of Joanna a full-on swinging London picture from 1968. “Lovely Joanna, doe-eyed and Twiggy-esque in her groovy gear, descends on the Big Black Smoke to take an education in free love, shoplifting and art at the Royal College, her exploits soundtracked by the great Scott Walker song”. Director Mike Sarne will be there for a Q&A session. And finally, get yourself their DVDs: London In The Raw, Primitive London and The Bed Sitting Room, all highly recommended.

www.bfi.org.uk
www.myspace.com/theflipsidepresents