The swinging '60s

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• The Siren says:

  April 17, 2011 at 10:58 am

  I recog­nized this right away! The movie had an amaz­ingly swinging look to it. Love these caps. Disappointing not very funny for me in most parts, though; talk about dated humor. That cli­max (so to speak) with Rita Tushingham could really make you under­stand why she so bugged Manny Farber.

• haice says:

  April 17, 2011 at 11:00 am

  God bless Richard Lester.
  To quote Julie Christie in TONIGHT LET’S ALL MAKE LOVE IN LONDON: “…a dolly girl does what she likes…dresses how she feels..has a won­der­ful time..no one cares..”

• Glenn Kenny says:

  April 17, 2011 at 11:14 am

  @ Haice: Amen.
  @ The Siren: It’s true, it’s not all that funny, at least not funny ha-ha, and I think that of course has to do with the humor being dated, but also with it being humor of a par­tic­u­lar sort…its spe­cif­ic dry­ness and absurdity reminds me of a lot of the Goon stuff that I just did­n’t “get,” where­as I got, and STILL get, ALL of Python, say. There’s a lot of sim­il­ar humor in Lester’s “The Bed-Sitting Room.” I think it’ a test­a­ment to Lester’s ver­sat­il­ity that he was equally adept at this sort of thing as he was with more American yuck-producing. “The Knack” still gets by on sheer visu­als; not just the people and the clothes and the fram­ing and all that, but the pre­ci­sion of the cut­ting, which is exquis­itely judged and timed. Mr. Soderbergh reck­ons it as one of Lester’s three mas­ter­pieces (the oth­er two being, in his estim­a­tion, “A Hard Day’s Night,” of course, and “Petulia,” which lat­ter was a pro­found influ­ence on Soderbergh’s “The You’re-Probably-Sick-Of-Me-Bringing-It-Up Experience”), and I can under­stand why/

• The Siren says:

  April 17, 2011 at 11:29 am

  @Glenn – Completely agree that the rhythm of the cut­ting in Lester’s movies is brilliant.

• That Fuzzy Bastard says:

  April 17, 2011 at 12:02 pm

  Tushingham is kind of per­fect for THE KNACK, though. A more express­ive act­ress would have cla­ri­fied what the fuck is going on in the cli­max, and it’s import­ant to the film’s weird integ­rity that it’s abso­lutely impossible to fig­ure that out. A lot of Lester’s early work depends on act­ors who are fun­da­ment­ally inex­press­ive (includ­ing the vari­ous Beatles, who are incred­ibly charm­ing but not exactly revealing)—there’s a high-modernist two-dimensionality to his black-and-white movies that requires the char­ac­ters to be as mech­an­ic­al as the fig­ures in a Futurist painting.

• The Siren says:

  April 17, 2011 at 1:24 pm

  I don’t have any trouble under­stand­ing what’s going on in the scene in the park and after­ward, I just don’t like it. But I don’t really blame Tushingham, des­pite my joke. I blame the script.

• Lord Henry says:

  April 17, 2011 at 3:24 pm

  I read the Soderbergh book on Lester recently, and so watched THE KNACK, which I had some­how over­looked. I think it is inter­mit­tently amus­ing, but dated. I agree PETULIA is a mas­ter­piece, and has major res­on­ance, par­tic­u­larly in regard to Nic Roeg. (I think Scott fir­ing the bis­cuits at Shirley Knight’s back is one of the most shock­ing acts of viol­ence in American cinema.)
  Can I sug­gest JUGGERNAUT as a replace­ment for THE KNACK in the third mas­ter­piece cat­egory? Beautifully per­formed and writ­ten, and genu­inely tense.

• haice says:

  April 17, 2011 at 5:57 pm

  In a vin­tage fea­tur­ette on the DVD of PETULIA one can glimpse Nic Roeg’s incred­ibly suave use of the light meter in regards to the oppos­ite sex.

• christian says:

  April 17, 2011 at 7:09 pm

  The only prob­lem with THE KNACK is the skewed sexu­al polit­ics. The play was writ­ten by a woman and the movie by a man, so the proto-rape-reversal is played glibly and like the sexu­al polit­ics of the day.
  It’s my favor­ite Lester though, and the scene with Toland whip­ping at Tushingham and Crawford is one of the best scenes of the era. She’s abso­lutely lovely in the film. And of course, Barry’s best non-Bond score of the 60′.

• Larry Aydlette says:

  April 17, 2011 at 8:25 pm

  I’m with Lord Henry on the vir­tues of JUGGERNAUT. Just anoth­er example of his range.

• nrh says:

  April 17, 2011 at 11:01 pm

  The Bed Sitting Room! Yes!That movie is abso­lutely amaz­ing, and thank god its on Blu-Ray now…

• Brian says:

  April 17, 2011 at 11:10 pm

  Gorgeous screen-caps, although I con­cur with the Siren that the humor does­n’t always work for me (no fault of the cast, though, who are superb). Can I sug­gest HELP! as being really under­rated? I saw it as a Beatles-obsessed teen and loved it, and it still holds up as a dizzy pop art delight. I also love that Soderbergh book about Lester, if only for the footnotes.

• Brian says:

  April 17, 2011 at 11:14 pm

  I was also sur­prised how much I enjoyed ROYAL FLASH when I caught up with it– it’s hardly ever spoken of, but its tongue-in-cheek tone and McDowell’s per­form­ance worked for me.

• Stephen Winer says:

  April 18, 2011 at 1:23 am

  I enjoyed ROYAL FLASH as well, and the film sent me to the won­der­ful George McDonald Fraser “Flashman” books, from which it derived, and for that I’m doubly grateful.
  THE GOON SHOW worked for me so I also have a great affec­tion for THE BED SITTING ROOM, but does any­one here share my love for ROBIN AND MARIAN? I think it’s one of the most romantic movies ever made with splen­did per­form­ances by Connery and Hepburn. Pure magic.

• Owain Wilson says:

  April 18, 2011 at 5:10 am

  A British comedi­an named Harry Enfield did a rather amus­ing pas­tiche of these Swinging 60s movies on his 1990s TV show, and I won­der if you might enjoy it. It starts 48 seconds in.
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4yFJO6MvlI

• D Cairns says:

  April 18, 2011 at 8:07 am

  I’m hugely uncrit­ic­al when it comes to Lester, so I’d like to sug­gest that the dis­com­fort pro­voked by the sexu­al polit­ics of The Knack is entirely inten­tion­al and inten­ded to pro­voke thought. That’s maybe harder to read nowadays now that things have thank­fully moved on at least somewhat.
  Of the films not men­tioned – A Hard Day’s Night still seems to me entirely suc­cess­ful in its mod­est ambi­tions, agree whole­heartedly with the love for Juggernaut and Robin and Marian, obvi­ously rate Petulia and to a less­er extent The Bed Sitting Room very highly indeed, like Royal Flash but would­n’t make great claims for it… would prof­fer The Three/Four Musketeers as a con­joined mas­ter­piece any­day, the best swash­buck­lers since Flynn hung up his rapi­er, and with a scath­ing irony to the com­edy which some­how does­n’t spoil the hero­ics. Michael Powell rated them highly and wished his own Elusive Pimpernell had been half as good.
  Among Lester’s less cel­eb­rated accom­plish­ments: giv­ing Jim Carrey his first movie role.

• John Keefer says:

  April 18, 2011 at 8:36 am

  Just a lovely warm feel­ing look­ing at these images, thank you sir.

• Pinback says:

  April 18, 2011 at 8:57 am

  I’m not going to make a claim for it as a lost mas­ter­piece, but I do feel Cuba is due for a reapprais­al. There are many small pleas­ures to be had, many of them visu­al and quite a few brought on by the won­der­fully oddball cast­ing, but it has a feel­ing of some­thing that just isn’t quite there. Was there stu­dio med­dling involved?
  Definitely agree with the love for the Musketeer films.

• Glenn Kenny says:

  April 18, 2011 at 9:32 am

  Nice to see so many sol­id Lester fans chim­ing in. I’m one, and I love or strongly like all of the pic­tures cited above. As for “Cuba,” from what I can infer from the Lester inter­views in Mr. Soderbergh’s book “Getting Away With It” (which really is a must for any­one inter­ested in Lester), “Cuba” pretty much turned out as Lester wanted, to the extent of estranging Sean Connery from the dir­ect­or because, Lester says, “for the first time in his career he’s play­ing some­body who is weak, inef­fect­ive, incom­pet­ent, help­less with women, and with a ter­rible tou­pee. And I can­’t ima­gine that he did­n’t know this from the begin­ning. In the ended he wanted to have a go at recut­ting it him­self to make it into a love story. He tried and it did­n’t work.”

• Owain Wilson says:

  April 18, 2011 at 9:45 am

  I’d like to men­tion Lester’s work on Superman II and Superman III. Having seen Richard Donner’s 2006 cut of the former, I think Lester improved that film immeas­ur­ably. It’s still massively enter­tain­ing and Terence Stamp is just mag­ni­fi­cent with his almost-but-not-quite-ludicrous ‘com­ic book vil­lain’ per­form­ance. The humour goes a bit too far, though.
  Superman III is pretty weak, but still has plenty to like, not least Christopher Reeve clearly hav­ing a huge amount of fun play­ing an evil Superman. This sec­tion of the film, lead­ing up to and includ­ing the scene where Clark Kent fights evil Superman is one of the series’ strongest.
  All of this is more than enough for this 80s kid to love Richard Lester forever.

• BLH says:

  April 18, 2011 at 10:06 am

  The Musketeers films are pretty clear mas­ter­pieces to my mind. I also quite like Lester’s Butch and Sundance sequel, which feels a little like Musketeers Go West.

• James Keepnews says:

  April 18, 2011 at 10:42 am

  In re: the swinging 70’s/80’s, I adore Brooke Adams in any and everything: Kaufman’s INVASION, KEY EXCHANGE, that freak­ing epis­ode of “Moonlighting,” and nat­ur­ally includ­ing CUBA. The film itself did feel like a mis­fire when the young crit­ic last watched when he was four­teen – the com­plex­ity of the Cuban revolu­tion felt glossed over (though effect­ively at times, e.g. the early “bal­lot stuff­ing”) and the love story uncon­vin­cing. I guess I blame Sir Sean’s editing.
  Hell yes, Lester’s a great dir­ect­or – per Sir Sean, ROBIN AND MARIAN, any­one? It’s amaz­ing to me that he has­n’t made a single film in twenty years.

• D Cairns says:

  April 18, 2011 at 10:45 am

  According to many sources includ­ing Steven Bach’s Final Cut, Cuba went into pro­duc­tion before the script was done, and faced numer­ous pro­duc­tion dif­fi­culties includ­ing los­ing the coöper­a­tion of the Spanish army due to an assas­sin­a­tion on the oth­er side of the coun­try, a vin­tage plane vital to the plot crash­ing into a five-foot tree on take 1, a steam train explod­ing on take 1, and like that. UA at that time was a stu­dio who fam­ously did NOT inter­fere, but the fates assuredly did.
  Lester traced the script prob­lems to the chal­lenge of bal­an­cing the polit­ic­al back­story with the fore­ground story of the prot­ag­on­ists, but he still likes the film.
  Oh, no one’s men­tioned How I Won the War? I think it’s bet­ter than Bed Sitting Room, a genu­inely chal­len­ging, angry protest film. With pratfalls.

• That Fuzzy Bastard says:

  April 18, 2011 at 10:48 am

  A HARD DAY’S NIGHT is like being injec­ted with 20 cc’s of pure joy, and reminds me of Dziga Vertov is some of its glor­i­ously pure cinema. I’ll also chime in on behalf of HOW I WON THE WAR—as delib­er­ately ali­en­at­ing as THE BED SITTING ROOM, but full of visu­al delights and creepily effect­ive devices.

• christian says:

  April 18, 2011 at 2:45 pm

  I think THE KNACK is con­fused by the end­ing with its rape/seduction theme, and lines like, “He raped me super!” are just too glib and redol­ent of the era. That’s my nit­pick with Lester, he’s such a great dir­ect­or that his need to inter­rupt the story with point­less gags (the egg being uncracked in reverse in THE KNACK is the prime example). That’s why PETULIA works best as a narrative.
  But whenev­er I want to feel like what it must feel like to be young, British and swinging in the 60’s, I watch THE KNACK.

• Tony Dayoub says:

  April 19, 2011 at 8:31 am

  Strange tim­ing to come to your site today (a day late), and see Jackie Bissett. Her former long­time com­pan­ion, Michael Sarrazin, died yes­ter­day, as I’m sure every­one has heard.

• Robert Cashill says:

  April 19, 2011 at 12:47 pm

  RIP Michael Sarrazin, a den­iz­en of that swinging era and a long­time para­mour of Bisset’s (and her co-star in THE SWEET RIDE).

• Helena says:

  April 20, 2011 at 1:54 am

  It was on a blue ray now. Nice movie.