Wordless Wednesday: Cheers!

Girl With Green Eyes (1964)

Director Desmond Davis captures plenty of shots of Rita Tushingham isolated and daydreaming that suggest her character’s more sensitive, poetic temperament (indeed there’s one of her in a headscarf standing in the pouring rain outside a Dublin bookshop that looks like a lost single cover for The Smiths and is arguably a moment that sums up my spirit animal) and it is this stillness that is often broken by Lynn Redgrave’s towering, giggling and gallomping intrusions.

See my full review at The Geek Show

Swing (1999)

I saw Swing more or less when it first came out on video. In the seventeen years (give or take) that have followed since I've little recollection of it beyond Alexei Sayle's turn as an initially intimidating leader of an Orangeman brass section, so I decided to track the film down again. It's only available on DVD as a region free import (from Holland I think) so that gives you an idea of just how little-seen and little-remembered Swing actually is. Initially, its status seems weird when you consider the cast involved, but watching it again you can unfortunately see why its been consigned to oblivion - 4 people (including me) list this as watched on here.

Swing affords The Full Monty star Hugo Speer and the Rochdale songbird Lisa Stansfield with their first starring role vehicle. Speer stars as Martin Luxford, a Liverpudlian chancer who, following an unwise decision to drive a getaway car for his shifty brother Liam (Brookside's Paul Usher) ends up spending two years in gaol. Whilst there, Martin learns the saxophone from a fellow inmate, a big black American fella called Jim who just happens to be played by The E Street Band's Clarence Clemons! Once released, Martin returns home to his mum and dad (Rita Tushingham and Tom Bell) and sets about going straight with the intention of forming a band ("those bloody Beatles" is the reaction he faces each time he mentions his ambition to family, friends or his probation officer) that will bring swing music to the masses once more. To get the venture off the ground, he sources a little help from the local Orange order ran by his uncle (Tom Georgeson) for a deal based on his first born being christened in the Protestant faith, a former National Front skin who played the drums for ultra right wing band Swastika, an old schoolmate who dreams of playing for arch enemies Manchester United, and his former girlfriend (Stansfield) who just so happens to have married the police officer who arrested him whilst Martin has been banged up.

Looked at in purely cynical terms it's clear that Swing hopes to emulate the success of The Commitments, but it's an ambition that is well beyond its reach. The most interesting thing about Swing is its characters and the cast chosen to play these roles, but the tepid direction lets them down at every turn. Watching it, I began to consider just how a poor choice of director can ruin a writer's vision, so imagine my surprise when I found out that the director Nick Mead was also responsible for the screenplay! (Mind you, he was also responsible for the screenplay to the Michael Caine/Roger Moore vehicle Bullseye! and I think that ought to tell you all you need to know about him) Mead - who devised the story with his producer Su Lim - resolutely fails to inject the same kind of spirit into the film that is inherent in the script itself. The contentious nature of the rag tag assortment of bandmates is never utilised and it's a grave error to allow their issues of racial and religious intolerance to go unresolved; Mead just glosses over them and they exist solely as a missed opportunity at best, or bizarre, silly comic relief at worst. It appears that he perhaps hoped that Sayle et al will have enough about them in the performance to breathe life into them, and whilst they try their best, the empty space in the script where character progression ought to exist and the poor realisation in bringing them to screen from the director means they're doomed to fail despite their best endeavours. 

They're not the only actors wasted here either; Tom Bell, seen here in the latter stages of his career before his untimely death in 2006, brings his usual quiet, noble and strong screen presence to the role but his biggest and best scene is opposite Liverpool poseur Danny McCall (of Brookside, panto and some desperate attempts at chart success fame) as Stansfield's corrupt policeman hubby - and he naturally wipes the floor with him, defying the inadequacy around him. Likewise, sax legend Clarence Clemons is something of a star attraction, but his actual role on screen (away from the fact that he provided the sax score that Speer mimes too) consists of little more than a series of dreamy cutaways in which he imparts Obi Wan Kenobi style wisdom to his protege, Martin. 

Front and centre of the film are Speer and Stansfield in their first lead acting roles. They equip themselves rather well - despite adopting scouse accents that are not natural to them - and Stansfield of course excels in the singing scenes, but the chemistry isn't exactly something that sets the world alight - and that's perhaps what was really required to lift the film above its other noticeable errors.

A musical romcom in which both the rom and the com fails and the music is always only going to appeal to a select audience means Swing fails to do just that - swing. The film's best joke perhaps lies (strangely) in the credits; 

'Five hamsters were killed in the making of this film...and if they had not moved, the staple gun would not have been used'

NB: Internet Movie Database includes Jimmy Nail in the cast list as a character named 'Arthur'; he doesn't appear in either the film or the  end credits of the film. A mistake on IMDB's part? (they neglect to include Del Henney who actually does appear!) or an example of scenes consigned to the cutting room floor? I'm leaning towards the former, I can't imagine Swing missing the opportunity of having a(nother) household name in its cast to attract audiences.

The Trap (1966)

It may be a bit of hoary old melodrama set in the rugged wilds of nineteenth century Canada, but I've always had huge affection for The Trap, a somewhat overlooked and largely forgotten mid 60s Anglo/Canadian production starring Oliver Reed as the lusty fur trapper Jean La Bete and Rita Tushingham as the mute young girl he buys to become his bride, Evie. I think it was seeing it with my Dad one evening back in the 80s or early 90s that did it, and of course, I defy anyone here in the UK not to be familiar with its rousing, stirring theme tune from the great Ron Goodwin, shared below - the BBC use it as their theme for the London Marathon coverage every year.

The dramatic and savage story centres around the constant battle for survival by man against nature and his personal loneliness. As the gregarious Le Bete, Reed arrives into a small coastal trading port with money to spend on wine, women and song. Women especially being on his agenda - he wants a bride to take back to his hunting shack in the mountains and lakes of British Columbia. However, he's too late for the yearly auction of women convicts from across the border in America and, thanks to a duplicitous evil stepmother, he purchases the traumatised Eve (Tushingham) who has been mute ever since she saw her real family massacred by Indians.

This was Reed's big break away from the Hammer horror films he had learned his trade on and he grabs the role with great relish and enthusiasm, making every inch of this physical, uncultured giant palpable. It is of course in stark contrast to his leading lady, the timid Tushingham whom he christens 'little rabbit' and whom naturally loathes him at first but, somewhat inevitably, learns to love both him and the rugged way of life he introduces her to. Tushingham was just 23 at the time and fresh from Richard Lester's The Knack, which couldn't have been more different. She gives a wonderfully expressive and physical performance as befits a role which affords her not one line of dialogue across the 100 minute duration.

The Trap is a good old fashioned ripping yarn shot on location on the lakes and in the forest of British Columbia, it is strikingly beautiful and, even if on occasion Reed and Tushingham are clearly taking potshots at National Geographic footage, director Sidney Hayers captures an impressive and authentic air to the proceedings enlivened by superb playing from its young assured leads and that superb Goodwin score.

A Taste Of Honey, Slight Return

Out On Blue Six : Ron Goodwin

The annual London Marathon takes place once again tomorrow. As such, I've selected Ron Goodwin's excellent rousing score from the 1966 movie The Trap which has for many years now been the official anthem for the BBC coverage of the Marathon

The Trap incidentally is a brilliant but sadly overlooked film starring Oliver Reed as an itinerant French Canadian fur trapper who buys a wife in the shape of the mute Rita Tushingham

Good luck for anyone running tomorrow!

End Transmission

The Guru

It's a horrible poster isn't it?

Well not horrible as such, but utterly misleading, suggesting some frothy tediously wacky 1960s East meets West frolic. In actual fact what The Guru is is an early feature from Merchant/Ivory, a straight and well meaning feature concerning a George Harrison like pop star (Michael York with the ridiculous name of Tom Pickle) turning his back on London to travel to India to study the sitar under his 'guru' (Utpal Dutt, who is very good in this) 

A Hard Day's Night in India it is not.

That's a better poster, specifically designed for London's Academy Cinema One focusing on Rita Tushingham's character in the film. Indeed, she's perhaps most surprising as she is far from being the perky working class girl she would normally depict here. Instead she plays a posh Kensington type drop out on the hippie trail in search of  inspiration and enlightenment. It's a role in which she is cast very against type, with her long mouse blonde hair, her striking black kohl eyes and her cut glass accent (playing against the usually posh York's working class affectations) She plays her role very well but one can't help wonder if someone like Julie Christie would have been a better bet. 

It's a good little film with Merchant Ivory's assured, earnest and faithful handling of the locale and the exotic and probably has more value as a feature now with hindsight and interest in such a period and the desire from the West to sample the Eastern culture than it did at the time. Indeed films like Hideous Kinky, Stoned, West Is West and Holy Smoke seem to have retrospectively trod the same path. All in all, though moderately enjoyable, the film is perhaps a little too earnest, a little dry, to actually hold or maintain much interest or love.

Side note: Of course whilst The Guru was being filmed out in Bombay George Harrison was there actually learning the sitar from his own guru Ravi Shankar. Which brought about this meeting between Beatle and the film's stars York and Tushingham captured for posterity

The Leather Boys

I love BBC2 in the wee small hours of more or less each Friday night/Saturday morning because they always seem to put on the hidden gems.


Tonight/this morning/right now! it's The Leather Boys from 1963, directed by Sidney J Furie and starring Rita Tushingham, Colin Campbell and Dudley Sutton.


If you're up now, switch over to 2!