The way we were... The L-Shaped Room (1962)

It’s still a surprise to find former ballerina and star of American in Paris and many more Hollywood films trudging around a grey and white London looking for a room to rent but it happened and Leslie Caron was deservedly awarded a Golden Globe and a BAFTA for best actress only missing out to Patricia Neal in Hud at the Oscars (along with Shirley MacLaine, Rachel Roberts and Natalie Wood!). She is indeed outstanding and is perfectly cast as the woman in trouble but who is able to get ahead of her situation.

In an interview accompanying the 2017 remaster, the remarkable Caron – then 86, now 94 – explains that in a meeting with screenwriter and director Bryan Forbes, she explained that she felt her character would have more agency and be less timid than as originally written. As she spoke, Forbes seemed to be doodling away at his desk but when he finished he presented her with an instant re-write of the part incorporating her views. So it was that her French sensibilities were able to alter the course of the film with results that remain impressive.

There’s some critical opinion that won’t quite accept Forbes as a full member of the Kitchen Sink Club but in ways his film reflects the broader sensibilities of say an Antonioni or Truffaut in terms of the communication between men and women. Tom Bell’s Toby is full of masculine energy as well as writerly disappointment and struggles to connect with Jane at first. Even when they eventually do, he’s at a loss in terms of how to respond: where she leads he finds it difficult to follow because of male pride and values that he might have expected himself to be free of.

Brock, Leslie and Tom

At the end he presents Jane with his manuscript for a story called The L-Shaped Room and it’s perhaps the only way he can explain the changes she has made in him. Caron is the perfect carrier for this sentiment; it’s not even swinging and here she is making her own choices, deciding on her choices, rebuffing support from the father of her child, Terry (Mark Eden, later the villain Alan Bradley in Coronation Street, killed by a tram in Blackpool!) on the grounds that she doesn’t love him. Tough choices and from a time when marriage was preferable to illegal abortion for some.

The film is indeed gentler than contemporary efforts set further North but I’ve a feeling that Forbes’ later successes have influenced the view of this film which deals with a number of taboo areas in a calm way that’s more accepting and less moralising than you might expect. Another famous Corrie legend, Patricia “Pat” Phoenix plays Sonia a sex worker with whom June has a very matter of fact albeit guarded, discussion about the nature of her work. The women understand even if the men struggle.

Vintage Classic promo for the Blu-ray

This is also one of those films that makes Reel Streets essential reading and it’s fascinating to see their “then and now” pictures of the locations especially when Jane trudges down St. Luke’s Mews, W11 as viewed from Basing Street, then Clydesdale Road, W11 and looking across to Colville Square. These streets look very fine now but in 1962, Notting Hill was less in demand…today's white-washed Georgian townhouses were yesterday's slums along with the mews with doors hanging at odd angles and a general air of poverty.

Those golden old days before eh?

Talking of which there are others in the house where June finds her accommodation in the famous L-Shaped Room - basically two rooms split into one sharing a tiny window in the top storey of a Georgian ruin, infested with bed bugs, damp and much else besides. No bed bugs were harmed in the making of this film although it’s difficult to say especially when Johnny (Brock Peters) the man in the I-shaped room next to the L, shows up with a means of squishing them. Brock Peters has a lovely intensity as the jazz-playing Johnny who, from Toby’s throw-away comment, we are to read as a gay man – his jealousy of his friend’s relationship perhaps being a reflection of his loneliness and need for inclusion?

Cicely Courtneidge, Leslie Caron, Bernard Lee, Avis Bunnage and Brock Peters

Similarly with Cicely Courtneidge’s superb turn as the ageing actress Mavis who famously performs Take Me Back to Dear Old Blighty as featured later in the introduction to The Smith’s The Queen is Dead. She is so well-wrought and full of nuanced dark corners. There’s a scene in which she reveals herself to June by showing her a picture of the love of her life and the latter’s reaction says all we need to know. Jane is non-judgemental and, again, that’s something – clichés aside – you might expect from a broad-minded Parisian? Not that Sylvia Sims or June Richie couldn’t have done just as well?

Then there’s no-nonsense land-lady Doris (Avis Bunnage) who drives a hard bargain and yet doesn’t want to appear mean in front of one of her gentleman friends. Even the cameo players have depth such as Gerald Sim as the doctor in hospital who helps Jane to give birth with non-judgemental sympathy. Even in the big Smoke there are friends to be found and if that makes Forbes a tad more romantic than his peers then so be it. This is the story of one woman’s ability to make her choice and it is uplifting and more complex than many a more sanitised or superficially grimy take.

Dusty Verdict: Watch this film for the streets of London, for the craft of the actors and the rightly lauded work of the leading lady, it’s a snapshot of the Golden Age of post-war Britain. For those who dream of resetting this country at some point in the past… maybe a timely reminder of life when it was harder for everyone, not just the outsiders in the boarding house.

I watched the Vintage Classics Blu-ray which features the 2017 restoration and interviews with Leslie Caron and the writer of the original book, Lynne Reid Banks. There’s also a featurette on The L Shaped Room and the British New Wave. This was the start of the Sixties when this country began to look up and beyond the austerity post War and Empire, when Victorian laws were revised and thrown away. Clearly, we are still in the middle of this process…

 

PS: You can find Reel Streets here - it is very well researched and highly addictive!

 

 

 

The young ones… What a Crazy World (1963), Network Blu-ray/DVD

Elvis Presley has a lot to answer for, after him every popstar worth their salt just had to be in a movie and this is one that completely passed me by… although I was in nappies when it was released. Based on Alan Klein’s stage play, it’s similar to Cliff Richard’s films of the time, with a mix of pop and show tunes but at least the latter are rooted in British vernacular and along with the locations and acting, make for a convincing story of London youth.

Both Joe Brown and Marty Wilde took their inspiration from American artists like everyone else but both had more of an edge than Harry Webb and they show it on screen too. Marty Wilde is Herbie Shadbolt and is especially impressive in the early sequences as he leads his gang down Whitecross Street market, which runs between Old Street and the Barbican. He’s a big fella – six feet five inches - and with huge plates of meat (size 12??) – who carries a genuine menace as well as cheeky charm and the boy from Blackheath does not look out of place as he unsettles the stall holders and most of the folk around him.

Don't mess with the big fella on the right! Marty Wilde is tall.

The lads go to the labour exchange to find it full of citizens from other commonwealth countries which leads us into Layabouts Lament, a quite startling song about the impact immigration is having on their waiting time for dole money; things are so bad, they’re going to have to think about getting a proper job. It’s done with humour and you have to remember that the filmmakers anticipated that this would be welcomed by their audience; a reminder of sensibilities shifter albeit perhaps not as much as we’d thought.

Joe Brown can also act and as the banjo-toting Alf Hitchens looks just a little like a young David Bowie (or t’other way round!). He too ain’t working much and this is the cause of constant ranting from his dad, Sam, played by the brilliant Harry H Corbett who runs off his lines in the manner of perfectly practiced guitar solos, slamming his son for laziness and laying about. The long-suffering counter to this is from mother Mary, the equally superb Avis Bunnage, who tries to keep things on an even keel even when Alf’s get up and go seems to have gone and his younger brother, Joey, seems to be taking his lead. 

Harry H Corbett lays down the law

 

Their sister Doris (Grazina Frame) not only has a job but a steady boyfriend, Solly (Monte Landis) who is eminently employed too. Joey and Alf take the mickey but really Sam’s endless ultimatums about putting up of shoving off are not too far from the truth. Cue the song Bruvvers as Doris riffs alongside Joey and Alf about unending sibling grievances.

Alf has a girlfriend, Marylin (Susan Maughan, who had a hit with Bobby’s Girl in 1962) about whom his ambivalence knows no bounds, he’s in a fug, and she knows that he needs to get a hold of himself or disappear in denial. In some ways it’s a well-realised relationship, they’ve run out of steam and either they stay or they go.

Susan Maughan

 

Michael Carreras directs from a script he co-wrote with Alan Klein, and he brings out the very best from his amateur players with performances of natural exuberance based, not doubt, on characters not unlike themselves. There’s great use of locations, not least Fitzroy Square where Alf duets with Marylin, the north bank at Cleopatra’s Needle and then Denmark Street where Alf tries to hawk his new song to reluctant publishers. It’s his only way forward, he just needs that lucky break…

The youngsters go to concert featuring Freddie and the Dreamers – a band I once saw in Blackpool in 1971 – and showcasing a style of pop music that would soon leave the class of ’58 like Joe and Marty, in the dust. Freddie may have been a loon but his was a Manchester beat group following in the wake of the Liverpudlian style. The Dreamers would have three top three hits in 1963 and a US number one in ’64; Freddie may have been older than Marty and Joe but he was riding the wave.

Dancing to the Dreamers

Here we get the full ridiculous routine of the band in their undies for We Wear Short Shorts as well as Sally Ann dressed in Sally Army uniforms…

Anyway, back to the action, there’s a riot going on at the Dreamers’ gig as Herbie says the right thing to the wrong girl or possibly the other way round and it all kicks off… His team includes Lenny (David Nott), Dave (Barry Bethel) and Jervis (Alan Klein our song and scriptwriter). They prevail and along with Alf sing their victory in Wasn't It A Handsome Punchup. Interesting how fisticuffs are always presented as almost harmless fun from Wayne westerns to rock and pop musicals… “rumbles” sure ain’t what they used to be but there’s no denying the role of violence in youth culture.

 

The young woman at the heart of the dancefloor dispute... Vivyan Dunbar

Alf gets a job in a music publisher but he’s only biking around sheet music deliveries in the hope of getting a break. Marilyn’s not convinced and just wishes he’d Please Give Me A Chance. But Alf is still to enamoured by the “independence” of Herbie and the gang and they even sing a song about it.

Now, if you’re one of those people expecting success in one aspect to trigger an outbreak of responsible adult thinking about the other, then you may not be far off the mark. But I couldn’t possibly say.

Joe Brown walks down Denmark Street, London's Tin Pan Alley as was...

Dusty verdict: What A Crazy World has much good spirit and the songs are worthy efforts that allow the singers to shine as actors and interpreters.

The supporting cast is very effective, chiefly Avis and ‘arry but there’s also a very interesting device using Michael Ripper to play a variety of characters from street hawking spivs to labour exchange administrators and generic old fellas; every time he quotes the line “bleeding kids” either in condemnation of in affection. It underpins the film’s central concern of generational conflict but also reconciliation as the lads, mostly, grow up.

Alan Klein was only 23 at the time and a bit of a pop star himself, he went on to sing vocals for the New Vaudeville Band under the title of Tristam, Seventh Earl of Cricklewood… a man of many talents!

The film is now available from Network on Blu-ray as well as DVD, details on their website.