Rita and Lynn go swinging... Smashing Time (1967)

 

Look, I may be green but I'm not cabbage coloured...

The difference between American and British psychedelia is often put down to the former’s greater seriousness driven by civil rights and the Vietnam War, US music and film of this period was generally more earnest although that wasn’t always a trademark of quality. The Brits for their part were more flower than power with pure whimsy rather than lysergic acid often being the case. That said, Sgt Pepper and Magical Mystery Tour quickly turned into Helter Skelter and Yer Blues, the Floyd lost Syd and started experimenting with music concrete and politics. In cinematic terms there seem to have been as many lame and tame US attempts at catching the zeitgeist as British and, ultimately, if you were there you probably don’t remember anyway.

Smashing Time could be viewed as an outsider’s take but there were enough cool and talented folk involved to still make it of interest. It was also filmed in Kings Road, Camden - The Roundhouse - Carnaby Street and the surrounds and there’s a genuine psychedelic buzz even if, as was probably the case at the time, the world was still mostly set in the reality of post-war austerity as much as the funky future: there’s certainly enough “dreary” on view in the streets.

Written by the by then middle-aged scouse jazzman George Melly, film and TV critic for the Observer at this time, he certainly knew the scene and even if that was less intimately than someone half his age, he’d been there in the fifties and no doubt mixed with the young trendies as he moved from the Colony Rooms to the French or the Coach; the regular Soho haunts that are mostly still there. In the 1980s I bumped into him in the old Soho Brasserie and we talked about Ronnie Scotts, a venue he must have played so many times.

Rita Tushingham and Lynn Redgrave

His work here is strongest in its presentation of the relationship of the leading characters played by two of the era’s great “It” Girls, fellow scouser Rita Tushingham as Brenda and Lynn Redgrave as Yvonne and. As my Gen Z daughter points out, the two are like competitive sisters, getting each other out of trouble even as they bicker and compete with the willowy Yvonne more certain of her own importance and Brenda smartly supporting her and, most often, getting her own way. Sisters, sisters… lord help the mister who comes between them.

The film starts with Brenda and Yvonne travelling down for the unspecified North to arrive at St Pancras, the first of many great locations all of which are covered in detail over at Reel Streets. The girls get a taxi across the West End crossing Weymouth Street with a view of the then brand-new Post Office Tower before heading over to Fleet Road in Belsize Park where they aim to stay. They lose their money to a tramp though and there’s a slapstick food fight in a café run by Arthur Mullard which ends up as a psychedelic mess and Brenda washing up.

Arthur Mullard

Yvonne meanwhile heads off to Carnaby Street which gives a real flavour of Swinging London full of garish signage and bright-coloured clothes. She gets photographed by top fashion taste-maker Tom Wabe (Michael York) who puts her in a newspaper as part of his series on The Girls Who Get it Wrong. Brenda buys some new – old – clothes from Mrs. Gimble’s (Irene Handl) thrift store and gets a job in a trendy shop run by Charlotte Brillig (Anna Quayle) but gets it wrong as she starts to sell the stock which was never Charlotte’s intention.

They find accommodation at 16 Grudge Street and their landlady, Toni (Toni Palmer) also gets them work as hostesses in a Soho club which involves Brenda dressing up as a rather fetching squirrel and Yvonne in evening ware. Neither has a clue about the subtext of their work and Squirrel has to come to Yvonne’s rescue when tipsy minor noble, Bobby Mome-Rath (Ian Carmichael on fine form), tries to have his evil way.

 

Lynn, Rita and Ian

Throughout Melly’s fast-flowing script there are numerous digs at materialism and the phoney rebellion against it. The girls eventually make it when their house is destroyed as part of a prank TV show hosted by Peter Jones as Dominic. Yvonne takes their winnings and buys herself into a career as a pop star, singing a suitably empty song about not being able to sing etc. The songs are all written by Academy Award winner (for Tom Jones (1963)) John Addison with Melly providing most of the lyrics and the two leads singing

Yvonne is a huge success with Jeremy Tove (Jeremy Lloyd) plotting out her future in the fast-moving world of hear-today, gone tomorrow but when he calls in super-snapper Tom Wabe, he renews his acquaintance with Brenda and, whisking her away to his house boat in the Regents Street Basin he takes the photo sets that will make her the new sensation.

The girls fall out and everything comes to a head at a swinging party in the revolving restaurant at the top of the Post Office Tower which has an hilarious guest list, with actress (Veronica Carlson) and Bishop, followed by a John and Yoko alike couple, a small Twiggy-type and what could be The Fab Four carry a swami on a carpet. Upstairs we see Tove’s latest group, The Snarks, played by members of Tomorrow, who really were genuine psychedelic royalty, Keith West who had a huge hit with Grocer Jack, Steve Howe, later of Asia and still lead guitarists with Prog Lords Yes and Twink who not only went to join The Pink Fairies but played with Syd Barrett post-Floyd - perhaps the pre-eminent figure of The Underground.

 

Keith West, Steve Howe and Twink

Dusty Verdict: Smashing Time is a flawed but richly entertaining film well directed by Desmond Davis who also made Girl with Green Eyes (1964) with Tushingham and Clash of the Titans (1981) with a robot owl! In addition to catching the moment also shows the city during this period of change as old Victorian streets were transformed and modernist concrete was on the rise – the irony being that much of this is now being replaced although what is now the BT Tower still stands.

For me Rita Tushingham is MVP and is full of energy and animated invention, hopping along the early morning Hampstead Streets in her squirrel costume and making a PC on the beat laugh whilst adding moments of seriousness too, especially in her relationship with Michael Yorke’s character. Lynn Redgrave gives a broader performance being both less northern than Rita and aligned with Melly’s sense of humour.

The film performed poorly though and was described by The Monthly Film Bulletin as "A clumsy attempt to create a female comedy team…  the glossy vulgarity of Smashing Time quickly becomes as irritating as the brash musical score and the discordant colours that constantly fill the screen." It’s value as a time capsule and the intent behind a critique of what we have seen rinsed and repeated ever since do make it worth your time, just don’t expect Blow Up!

Lynn Redgrave

Michael York and Rita T at The Roundhouse

 

Toni Palmer and one of the defining images of the sixties...

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.