Beatnik kicks… The Party's Over (1965)

"… unpleasant, tasteless and rather offensive…"

 John Trevelyan, British Board of Film Censors, March 1963

It would take Guy Hamilton’s film two years to gain release after the BBFC found it just too much on first viewing and the version that made it to the big screen had several scenes recut and a voice-over introduction from Oliver Reed explaining that it was “This film is the story of some young people who chose to become - well, for want of a better word - 'beatniks'.  It's not an attack on beatniks; the film has been made to show the loneliness, and the unhappiness, and the eventual tragedy that can come from a life lived without love for anyone or anything.  Living only for kicks is not enough.” And cue the great Annie Ross singing, Time Waits for No Man music by John Barry and lyrics from Mike Pratt who is also one of the players in the film (and Floyd, Gilmour, Mason bassist, Guy Pratt’s father).

This message comes as the beatnik/hipster crowd make their way over Chelsea Bridge back north of the river after a wild party in Knightsbridge. They walk in the silence of their emerging four AM hangovers, some happy, some sad and at least two in thrall to a beautiful American woman walking at the front. There are various versions of this film and the BFI’s Flipside dual pack features both the shorter director’s cut – around 90 minutes - and the longer 94 version which cuts out some of the more shocking moments and inserts more “learnings” for the more nihilistic of the main characters.

Directed by Guy Hamilton from a script by Marc Behm (Help!, Charade etc) the film has a mostly young cast presenting us with post-jazz/pre-hippy culture with the clear influence of drugs and drink on their behaviours. These are the first of a new questioning generation and from 1963 a lot of what they say correlates with the clunky anti-authoritarianism of Peter Fonda and The Wild Angels…

The big difference here is that these cats are mostly British middle class, or even posher, especially the intelligent but annoyingly challenging Moise (Oliver Reed) a character who must have given his nanny worries from an early age and who is rebelling against all expectation because he can afford to. Yet still, there are real risks in his posturing and there’s no doubt that he not only always wants the one he can’t have but here it really is driving him mad.

The Queen Bee of their social group is an American heiress, the ethereal Melina (the stunning Louise Sorel, who I believe is still working?) who see right through him possibly because in some ways they’re alike; both rebelling against their privilege and unable to commit to anyone or anything in the endless, trust-funded waiting room of their mid-Twenties – the same age as most of the cast during filming in 1963, Louise Sorel being one of the youngest at 22.

Louise Sorel and Oliver Reed

Their partying and general noise doesn’t always ring true but the film opens really well with some painted feet leaving foot marks on the ceiling of a nice apartment in South Kensington as the camera tracks across the amin characters via drinks being passed, cigarettes being lit or, then stolen to light a slim cigar as we see the first instance of Moise attitude to his friends and, in this case, lovers robbing the steadfast Libby (Ann Lynn, who is one of the best performers in this film), only to throw her cigarette away after he’s lit the cheroot.

Amongst the others, an American artist called Geronimo played by Mike Pratt with a wayward accent, the demure Nina (Katherine Woodville), an older German called Tutzi (Maurice Browning), the tactile and inseparable, possibly affectionate, Countess (Mildred Mayne) and Fran (Annette Robertson), and the young Ada (Alison Seebohm). The there’s Philip (Jonathan Burn) who is besotted with Melina and, as with even Moise, this is unrequited.

Into this picture arrives Carson (Clifford David), the successful young American businessman who is promised to Melina, he even works for her father Ben (Eddie Albert*) and so it feels more than slightly arranged. Melina might well agree as she decides to avoid meeting him and enlists the gang to misdirect and mislead him despite the best efforts of their landlord, Hector (Roddy Maude-Roxby) to help the handsome American.

This all feels a bit cruel rather than funny but luckily Carson is up to it and he has his own reservations about his intended enough to not be that surprised by her behaviour and, indeed, to be impressed by the most sensible of her English friends Nina.

Things take a turn after another wild party at which finally Nina tries to take Carson to meet Melina but when they get there, she’s left and no one will say where. The next day, after a night consummating their relationship, Nina tries to get Carson to go with her to Stowe-on-the-Wold… she also tries to tell him something about the party and Melina.

Then Father Ben arrives and the stakes are raised as different versions of the party emerge and the fate of Melina becomes less certain…

Dusty Video Rating: The Party’s Over is coy over the key issue in the story even with the restored Director’s version on the BFI’s DVD and Blu-ray set. Without giving the secret away, the fuller version does still provide some upsetting footing all of which explains the characters motivations for what happens next – especially Philip.

Oliver Reed is outstanding in portraying the entitled aggressor, whose role in life is to be the fly in the soup of the pompous “straights” and he has the range to show a more vulnerable side to his character and one capable of learning in the final analysis. A lot of the other actors are given precious little to do but Eddie Albert delivers as does Ann Lynn and Katherine Woodville who, along with Clifford David, play two of the most sympathetic characters.

Of course there's also the score from John Barry which always lifts any film and which here allows him to replicate the modern jazz of the cellar clubs and the torch song that starts the film and features at another climactic scene. He also borrows the bass line - slightly altered - from 007!

As cautionary tales go it’s harder hitting/more uncomfortable than most and gives some great location shots of London in the raw, or at least Chelsea and Kensington in the early 60s!

 

*As Fate would have it, Katherine Woodville ended up marrying Eddie Albert’s son Edward in 1979 and the two were together until his death in 2006.