No future? Jubilee (1978)

It’s taken me four decades to finally watch this film which is surprising given how much it was a part of the punk and post-punk culture I was so enamoured of in my teenage years. I’d gone to see Adam Ant at Eric’s club in Liverpool – our generation’s Cavern – and played the Slits and, especially Siouxsie & the Banshees to death. I was too young to get into the cinema at the time although that didn’t stop me getting into pubs and punk clubs.

The Banshees feature in this film and we also have The Slits smashing up a car in the kind of WWII bomb-damaged derelict street that you could still find in Liverpool and London: it’s visceral moment but one which director Derek Jarman used ironically. I saw many of his later films, probably at the Scala in London, but never travelled back to this… his films are undeniably middle-brow and reward the concentrated effort of a cinema screening perhaps more than home video. Very often he makes his point, say with The Last of England or The Garden, over the course of a stuttering narrative filled with images designed to shock and provoke alongside genuinely moving juxtapositions.

Jenny Runacre

He worked with Judi Dench, Tilda Swinton and other notables but often included non-professionals. For Jubilee, his second film after the all Latin, all-male Sebastiane (which the NME loved but, again, I’ve not seen), he recruited a mix of punk performers to go alongside the acting class of Jenny Runacre, Ian Charleson, Karl Johnson. Adam Ant plays Kid, a proto punk, whilst darling of the London scene, Jordan, plays Amyl Nitrate, a member of a gang aimed at some kind of revolution and Toyah Willcox is the aptly named Mad; a riot grrrl all her own.

The mix of styles gives the film an edginess that goes well with its deliberated shocks; it’s not an easy watch and mixes moments of beauty with revulsion. Poor old Wayne County (late Jayne of course…) is kidnapped and then murdered, as is Gene October (of second division punks Chelsea) whilst Kid is badly beaten by two bent coppers… there is, it seems, no future in England’s dreaming.

Toyah

The film begins with Elizabeth I (Runacre) travelling forward in time to visit the jubilee of the second Elizabethan Age with the aid of John Dee (Richard O'Brien) and the Ariel (David Brandon), a mystical figure borrowed from Shakespeare. She finds her country transformed into a bleak landscape of petty cruelty and unkindness in which, yes, anarchy reigns and not the sovereign.

Runacre’s other role is the amoral and psychotic Bod, the leader of the gang who just want anarchy in the UK even at the expense of punk star lives. The crew is made up of Mad, Amyl, Chaos (Hermine Demoriane), Angel and Sphinx  (Charleson and Johnson) two “brothers” as well as Crabs (Nell Campbell aka Little Nell – the second Rocky Horror alumni after O’Brien) who is busy having her fun with Kid… interesting the dominance her character has in this situation.

Jordan. The boys don't know but the girls understand.

There are many such signifiers and the film is a lot to absorb even now with the crew deciding to commit more outrageous acts provoked by a society on the brink of breakdown. The response of Elizabeth I is often esoterically expressed but it punctuates and all too Tudor ferocity even if the contrast is a purely ironic one: fake Tudors and plastic punks.

There’s a tycoon called Borgia Ginz played by the amazing Jack Birkett who paints a show-stealing picture of money-grabbing madness presiding over a business empire designed to feed of human weakness. There’s an especially full-on orgy at one of his clubs in the film, choreographed, of course, by Lindsay Kemp.

Avenging Kid’s brutal demise, Bod throws a Molotov cocktail over one of the policemen who had attacked him screaming “No Future!” – it’s more of a statement on the times than the filmmaker’s beliefs.

No future

Jubilee is about such moments and, especially those driven by Jarman’s visual aesthetic with Jordan’s ballet dancing around a bonfire in a wasteland one of the most memorable. The camera speed varies and Ian Charleson stands naked in the background wearing the mask of a classical figure. A longhaired rocker approaches and cuts his own hair as if experiencing a punk conversion… as John Peel once said “make of that what you will…”

He also said, “that’s the one boys and girls, that’s the one!” after playing all of the Banshees debut LP on his show. I don’t think Jubilee is The One for Derek Jarman but it’s a funny, challenging and unsettling film all the same.  What it means is up to you, in a very punk “bring your own meaning” sense but there are certainly more than a few frisons with contemporary culture: its time hasn’t passed it just gets closer.

Jordan dances and the Ian watches wearing only a mask...

Dusty Verdict: One for old punks and those of us who chanted along to Complete Control, Something Better Change and Anarchy… it’s lasted better than many of those songs. Jarman was criticized for his portrayal of the punk movement and he criticized back over its appropriation of fascist imagery – both moved on though and the best of punk quickly became solidified into new wave with more thought-out politics and better music. For every Sham 69 or Cockney Rejects there was a Wire, a Magazine or a Joy Division.

Toyah is also amazingly good – so much troubled fury that I’d never seen from her wanna be Siouxsie pop-punk: respect. Jordan also shows hitherto unknown talents and she can dance too - her real name is Pamela Rooke and she now works as a vetinary assistant.

Brian Eno’s score is also near timeless and like Elizabeth, he seems plugged into the future.

Ultimately this feels like a film to read rather than watch but if Elizabeth I was to visit England now would she feel any less depressed??

Robbing hoods... Two-Way Stretch (1960)

 

When this blog was invented it’s stated aim was to allow me to watch and work my way through my boxes of old VHS recordings in order to decide which ones to keep, which ones to throw and which ones to replace with DVDs. The rule, so far, has been to cover films from 1960-1979 – although this rule has become more and more frustrating especially as I’d reckoned without the sudden appearance of a new supply of many, many films from this period and beyond courtesy of Talking Pictures TV… which has been transmitting and incredible volume of British film from the period of my childhood and earlier. In short, my problem has increased… only instead of boxes of videos, I now have a Virgin Box crammed full of films, A Family at War, Callan and so much more.

So it goes… but I must soldier on writing about these films – do I keep, burn or delete or, worse to I upgrade to Blu-ray?! So many of these films I hadn’t heard of and, in fairness I was either not even born or simply too young… toddlers don’t reckon crime capers much, not when there’s trains to play with.

It seems improbable that this film came before the Great Train Robbery (in 1963) but there must have been something in the air at the time; some essentially British post-war criminality that saw a big job as somehow justifiable but also funny… Was it class that drove this rebelliousness or something deeper after a decade or more of post-War austerity and a Conservative government rapidly losing its charm on a restless populous. The UK wasn’t just waiting to swing in the sixties but to elect a Labour government and to kick back, the generation that won the war wanting some credit and a good time to boot!!

Warren and Bernard

So it is that we find an entirely unrepentant group of prisoners living the life of Riley on her majesty’s pleasure; Dodger Lane (Peter Sellers, beginning to prove that he could do pretty much anything on screen), “Jelly” Knight (the redoubtable David Lodge) and Lennie (The Dip) Price (the legendary Bernard Cribbins who endures so magnificently in Doctor Who and other programmes). Dodger’s the leader with Jelly the muscle and Lennie the talent, if picking pockets is what you consider art.

The three are close to release and pretty much have the run of the prison with a naïve and overly optimistic Prison Governor Horatio Bennett (Maurice Denham) and a very easy-going Chief Prison Officer Jenkins (George Woodbridge) who only see the best in the men even as they steal the Gov’s ciggies and take liberties left right and centre.

The boys are visited by their relatives, Lennie’s Mum Mrs Price (Irene Handl) who encourages him to keep up the family honour by escaping and Dodger’s fiancé, the curvy Ethel (Liz Fraser who is, as always a wide-eyed wow!), who he uses to distract the entire room as various contraband is passed to the prisoners.

Irene and Liz

 A Vicar arrives and bless me if it isn’t Wilfrid Hyde-White as Soapy Stevens, a criminal mastermind whose last plan landed the lads inside. This time he’s got a sure-fire winner, the perfect crime to be committed while the boys are still in prison… all they have to do is escape for a few hours to do it.

Now, given the generally lax conditions this should be a doddle but Officer Jenkins is due to retire and his replacement is the ball and chain-breaking, Prison Officer 'Sour' Crout played with stiff-backed relish by Lionel Jeffries. A battle of wits ensues as Crout tries to crush the lad’s spirits and Dodger has to fix a way out past his steely-beady eyes…

Of course, the gang manage their escape and Soapy’s plan looks to have run like clockwork… can they really get away with it?

Porridge!

Dusty Verdict: Two Way Stretch was the fourth biggest film at the UK box office in 1962 and you can see why with this wealth of comic talent and a well-written script ably directed by Robert Day.

Jeffries and Sellars are superb as the impertinent force versus officious object – the sparks fly! There’s also a supporting cast including Arthur Mullard, Warren Mitchell, Thorley Walters and many more – such strength in depth and far from just a vehicle for the irresistible rise of the man formerly known as Bluebottle…