It's central construct of playing witness to your own past might be as creaky as the boards the middle-aged Barbara Windsor is treading, and the script has a fair few clunkers, but Babs is mostly saved by some peerless performances that make this a amiable way to pass ninety minutes, but some way off the kind of satisfying success ITV biopics like Jeff Pope's Cilla enjoyed.
Samantha Spiro is effortless as the middle-aged, seemingly washed up Windsor, as you would expect from someone who jokingly admits to having played Windsor for half her life now (she had previously played her at the National in 1998's Cleo, Camping, Emmanuelle and Dick, reprising the role for the TV adaptation, Cor Blimey, in 2000) but it's Jaime Winstone who really shines here with the role of the young Babs, capturing her sexy look, her defiant pluck and that infamous wiggle and giggle that made her both a national treasure and the wet dream fantasy for many of schoolboy in the 1960s. Neither actress goes for an impersonation, as that wouldn't be enough to sustain a biopic alone, but they capture an essence of the person remarkably well.
They're both nicely supported (ooh-err!) by Nick Moran as Windsor's father, the man whose love she was constantly searching for throughout her life, an unfortunately all too underused Leanne Best as her mother (why give her so little to work with? Best is a brilliant performer who lifts anything she appears in), Luke Allen-Gale as bad boy Ronnie Knight, and the inspired casting of Zoe Wanamaker as Joan Littlewood and a wonderful spot of mimicry from Robin Sebastian as Kenneth Williams. Only Alex MacQueen as Windsor's agent jarred; I know he has his screen persona of the prissy, over-enunciating dullard of dubious sexual orientation, and I have liked him in many other things, but it's the only thing he does in each role he takes and it just doesn't sit well when he's required to act outside of comedy or as something or someone else - look at his ineffectual turn as a political villain in series three of Peaky Blinders, and it's the same here.
When the film actually settles down to focus on Barbara's big break with Littlewood's legendary Theatre Workshop, Babs comes alive, but Tony Jordan's script feels compelled to throw in too many in-jokes (the Dame reference, the Carry On style score) and flat footed references ('you've an offer for a film...the producer is Gerald Thomas' *clunk*) that consistently hold the film back and shy away from the answers it's naturally searching for as the film refuses to pinpoint why it feels Windsor's potential was ultimately as squandered as it was, leading her to throw her lot in with the Carry On team. I also really felt like the whole thing was hampered by the little meta-touch of crowbarring the real Windsor into the film; I'm not so cold-hearted to begrudge her her song at the end (performed to an audience made up of the cast and crew, which was a lovely touch) but the other two instances in the middle of the film just feel wrong and out of place, threatening to sink the whole affair. On this occasion, less would have been more.
Bronco Bullfrog, Barney Platts-Mills' forgotten film of 1969 deserves wider attention. Like Ken Loach's work from the same era, it has much to say that is truthful about the so called swinging sixties. In focusing on the dead end existence of east end teenagers, it shows that the party the history books erroneously claim everyone was having was clearly going on elsewhere in London, for a select few.
Shot on the cheap with non-professional actors schooled by the great Joan Littlewood, Platts-Mills' film garnered rave reviews at Cannes and even picked up a Writers' Guild award but, with distributors uncertain about what to do with it, it quickly disappeared from view, remaining untroubled by the BBC and Channel 4 (indeed it's been shown just twice on British television in 47 years) probably because it fails to fit the collective narrative of the 1960s, pre-empting as it does the more authentic works of Alan Clarke et al at the tail end of the subsequent decade instead. Unearthed by BFI Flipside six years ago, it stands as a rare time piece of the watershed between the '60s and the '70s.
Bronco Bullfrog plays out along the sink estates, LV accepting cafes and the bomb sites of Stratford populated by amateur moddish/suedehead actors who actually lived in that area and lived the lives they were tasked with depicting. At its heart is the mixed fortunes of a pair of star-crossed lovers, Del (Del Walker) and Irene (Anne Gooding), whose budding relationship is hampered at every turn by their elders and society as a whole. Their parents nag them, each believing that the other is a bad influence on their child and effectively banning them from seeing one another, ensuring their coitus is pretty much a non-starter never mind interruptus. With no employment opportunities to be had at the fag end of the decade either, they have little in the way of cash to set themselves up or even go out much to live as they'd like.
In the midst of all this comes Del's old friend, the titular and near-mythic Bronco Bullfrog (Sam Shepherd), a Borstal runaway who, like Del and Irene, is also kicking his heels and pondering the possibilities of a better life. In between bottles of coca-cola in the local greasy spoon at night, before going back to his digs, he dreams and schemes of robbing a goods train and making good with the loot.
It was Platts-Mills desire to create a new kind of cinema; exclusively independent and authentic, it would be free, accessible and working class. In Bronco Bullfrog he nails his ambitions perfectly, depicting a brisk and engaging slice-of-life drama right up until its Truffaut Les quatre cents coups inspired freeze-frame hanging ending. His direction is observational, as befitting a man who cut his teeth in independent documentary productions (having previously shot St Christopher concerning the education system for children with special needs, and Everybody's An Actor, Shakespeare Said which introduced him to Littlewood and the cast he would subsequently go on to use here) and his direction remains rough and ready, capturing the occasional hesitant, unsure and unschooled moments, but that's all just part of the appeal; reality is caught and captured on every single frame.
What's surprising (or perhaps not, given how quickly the film was buried) is the actors involved never worked in the profession again. Walker, who shines in the lead role and looks not unlike a young Pete Townshend, was never to be heard of again, not even an episode of The Bill to his name. This is a real shame, but not as much of a tragedy as the one which befell his equally impressive leading lady Gooding, who Platts-Mills recalls died at an early age, 'on the dancefloor' And Bronco Bullfrog himself? Sam Shepherd is now a porter at Spitalfields market with a memory of the night he really was the ring-leader of this unlikely mob; confronting Princess Anne at the premiere of Olivier's Three Sisters in Oxford Circus to ask her to come and see their little film instead. His admirable chutzpah paid off in the end, and the princess duly took her seat alongside Shepherd at the Mile End ABC a week later. When she confided to him that Irene's mother's endless moaning about her daughter's taste in boys had reminded her of her own mother's stance, it took Shepherd a moment to realise that she was of course referring to the Queen!
Proof perhaps that what Platts-Mills was attempting really was accessible to all. It might be showing the reality of the 60s in all its monochrome, grubby glory, but it still has something to say to everyone...even a royal!
Another sad passing in the world of entertainment, actor Stephen Lewis - most famous for Blakey in 70s sitcom On The Buses - has died at the age of 88.
The actor is said to have passed away quite peacefully in the early hours of Wednesday morning at a nursing home in Wanstead, East London.
Born in Poplar, East London in 1926 Lewis was a merchant seaman when he caught the acting bug from watching a performance by the Theatre Workshop from acclaimed director Joan Littlewood. Meeting her subsequently, he auditioned to join the company and left the sea for good. There, he penned the stageplay Sparrows Can't Sing which was later turned into a feature film in which he played a council estate caretaker. In a career spanning several decades, Lewis appeared in many sitcoms including his role as 'Smiler' in Last of the Summer Wine and in Croft and Perry's Oh, Doctor Beeching! He also starred in the films The Krays, Staircase, Personal Services and Adventures of a Plumber's Mate
But it was as Cyril 'Blakey' Blake, the miserly inspector in On The Buses, it's three big screen spin offs and its Spanish set sequel Don't Drink The Water that Lewis remains best known.
RIP
Future On The Buses star Stephen Lewis penned the stage play Sparrers Can't Sing, and this subsequent (correctly spelt) film adaptation directed by British theatre legend Joan Littlewood, her cinematic debut.
Blakey's, sorry, Lewis' story is a simple one; a merchant sailor returns home to London's East End after two years away at sea to find life hasn't stood still in his absence and his wife seems to be AWOL, with unsettling rumours that she's shacked up with another man. But in using Littlewood's distinctive and, for the time, bold improv techniques and adopting a freewheeling British new wave air to the proceedings, Sparrows Can't Sing becomes a southern response to A Taste of Honey, the north country new wave play that had also made its debut thanks to Littlewood's Theatre Workshop.
Aside from its kitchen sink credentials ramped up by the extremely heightened new wave playing, the delight of Sparrows Can't Sing is in its wonderful cast of familiar faces. At every turn there's someone you recognise, all regulars of Littlewood's troupe; look there's Yootha Joyce, and now there's Brian Murphy - years before they played George and Mildred. There's Harry H Corbett, Victor Spinetti and A Taste of Honey's Murray Melvin. There's Roy Kinnear, Avis Bunnage and John Junkin. Look there's the slobbering bulldog of a man, Arthur Mullard - and wince as you recall he was a child abuser in his private life, making his daughter's life a misery - and, of course, Queenie Watts. There's future On The Buses star Bob Grant, and there's even Stephen Lewis himself, playing an officious caretaker of the new tower block, chest swelling with pride at what was initially seen as clean, future living - though his script of course knows that even then it wasn't all it was cracked up to be.
But best of all, at the film's core is the love triangle played by returning seaman James Booth, his errant wife Barbara Windsor and her lover 'on the buses' (not, yet Blakey!) George Sewell.
Booth delivers a fine essay in sexually charged, rough boy swagger as Charlie. But this isn't Albert Finney in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, and he tempers it with some suitably over the top moments in keeping with the frivolous air which makes what grubby realism lurks beneath the exterior all the more bewitching. Sewell, who was one of our finest naturalistic actors, is a quiet and sensitive presence as 'the other man' Bert, but perhaps best of all is Barbara Windsor. Just 24, the pocket rocket with the boobs and bum perpetually sticking out was BAFTA nominated for her performance as Booth's straying wife, Maggie - proof that this was something a little more than the walking wiggle she delivered for a plethora of Carry On films. As Maggie, she is deeply authentic and all too believable, depicting a three dimensional performance that is incredibly funny, incredibly sexy, hard edged yet soft, a little dumb and deeply troubled.
I also liked that the central love triangle is replicated comedically by the younger characters on the fringes, Maggie's niece Nellie, Georgie and Chunky. You just know they have similar trouble ahead...
As with many films from this era, Sparrows Can't Sing now serves as a valuable historical document. It depicts a 1960s that was just about to swing, its generous location filming allowing us to see a London that was, at that very moment, changing. The slums were being knocked down ("Where are all the houses?" Booth remarks when returning to his street to find it simply isn't there any more) to be replaced by the high rise tower blocks and with it, the community itself is changing; Littlewood doesn't shy away from showing the new ethnic minorities arriving in London, though it's perhaps a shame that the script doesn't allow them to be anything else other than exotic background colour, especially after the groundbreaking A Taste of Honey which ultimately, Sparrows Can't Sing cannot top.
