Eastend story… Sparrows Can't Sing (1963)

Directed by theatrical legend Joan Littlewood from a play written by Stephen Lewis – Blakey himself from On the Buses – Sparrows Can’t Sing is a slice of cinema as history showing the East End as it was in the early sixties as well as the unique collaborative style of cast and crew.

Littlewood had mentored Lewis who had originally been a merchant seaman and encouraged him to write the play which she directed before transferring to the screen. Many of the original performers on the boards also took their parts in the film and the warmth and ease of the company is in evidence throughout.

In a rush

Barbara Windsor was initially too upset to join the Q&A after the 2015 BFI screening of this restoration but eventually joined the eternal Murray Melvin to discuss the work of their departed colleagues including Stephen Lewis who had only passed away the week before. Like so many of the streets and buildings, even the “new” ones, the actors have now gone leaving this increasingly precious reminder of their life and times and a part of the world that has changed almost beyond recognition.

Arthur Mullard (who I used to regularly see in Highbury Fields in the 90s) drives a horse and cart aided by Bob Grant (also to work with Lewis on those buses). Queenie Watts is essentially herself as a jazz singing pub landlady, Yootha Joyce is a local chatterbox whilst the man who was to be ‘er George (Brian Murphy) keeps pigeons round the back of Roy Kinnear’s house. Harry H. Corbett is even selling  groceries from a market stall…

James Booth and Yootha Joyce (centre)

Anyone who was already - or was later to become - anyone was in it! And chief among them all are the dynamite duo of James Booth and Barbara Windsor. Booth has the edge and electricity of a John Cassavetes only without the method – it’s just something he has. He can’t sit still or simply be – there’s always an expression on his face and a natural reaction to everything that’s going on around him all expressed in an instant – a genuine motion. At one point, his character, Charlie, is looking in a house where he thinks his ex-wife Maggie (Babs) is supposedly now living – he goes from room-to-room and meets people from different cultures in every room and his reaction is delightful especially when he encounters a room full of Afro-Caribbeans who offer him a replacement Maggie who he looks only too grateful to accept.

Plenty of Vim from Babs!

He’s matched, as he has to be, by Barbara Windor’s Maggie who is every bit as energetic as he and able to turn on an emotional sixpence. She’s the definition of unpredictability and plays off the men in her life using her whiles where Charlie may use his fists.

The story plays out like a great American musical as Barbara belts out the theme tune over the credits.  Then we switch to the docks where it’s Booth and Glynn Edwards strolling away from their ship rather than Sinatra and Gene Kelly: Charlie’s back and it’s been almost two years. But things didn’t end well last time – “there were murders” – the locals recall, endless fights and grief as Charlie stepped way out of line.

Avis Bunnage and the great Roy Kinnear

He’s very much the returning anti-hero and the film takes a picaresque route following his impact on his former neighbours, friends and family as his appearance looks highly likely to spark some unhappy reactions all round. Everybody knows, but no one has the courage to tell him. It’s a simple structure and one that first-time director Littlewood, uses to create a very impressive visual momentum with a plethora of cherry-picker rising shots that show off these fantastic locations to full effect.

And, all of the time, the streets are full of people running, hiding, chasing and generally being in a rush to live their lives. Even Maggie – as we all know – totters about with rhythmic purpose and at full speed creates quite a scene as she heads towards her re-union…

1963!

But before all that, we get to meet the neighbourhood as Charlie renews his acquaintance and begins his single-minded search to get back with Maggie.

It begins in poignant disappointment as he finds his old house, the one he grew up in, completely demolished. The pace of change has been relentless and his old manor hasn’t just gone from memory it has been removed entirely: what will he find to reconnect with?

George Sewell

 But what Charlie doesn’t know and everyone wants to stop him knowing is that in his absence, Maggie has moved in with bus driver Bert (George Sewell) and has also had a baby of far from certain parentage…

Brother Fred (Roy Kinnear) tries to hide in the toilet whilst his missus Bridgie (Avis Bunnage) tries to get a message out to Maggie… what good it will do when he finds out we don’t know…

Nellie and the boys

Elsewhere history is kind of repeating itself as the Gooding’s daughter Nellie (Barbara Ferris) is taking her own sweet time choosing between her foreman Georgie (Murray Melvin) and the more earthy charms of layabout Chunky (Griffith Davies): George has a shiny mod suit and fancies himself a singer whilst Chunky is more grounded where he is: if there’s a blade of grass the chew he’ll opt for that.

Nellie manages to get to Maggie and Bert’s new high-rise flat in spite of the officious interruptions of the caretaker – Lewis in proto-Blakey mode. Maggie’s calm, dealing with the bloke in the bush rather than worrying about the one in hand.

Arthur arrives with the beer

Soon Charlie is holed up in The Red Lion with brother Fred under close watch in case he tries to make a break for it before Maggie is found. After a few hours and many drinks Charlie almost cracks and the pub looks on in wonder and fear at what mayhem is about to be unleashed but he holds it in… this time.

Maggie turns up and there’s a nice moment when Charlie smirks and just about prevents himself from looking round as Maggie enters the Lion and charms hello to all the regulars. Then the tango begins as the will-they, won’t-they business gets started. After a few rounds – a draw it seems – the two agree or disagree to meet later…

Show-down at The Red Lion...

What happens next? Ah well, that’d be telling…

Dusty verdict: Sparrows Can't Sing is still a joy and recommended to anyone who wants a slice of contemporary performance from early sixties theatre-cum-cinema. You can almost taste the atmosphere in streets, pubs and houses: a period so vivid it must still exist somewhere… if not in Walford perhaps but near by…

Left holding the baby

The remastered DVD is available from Movie Mail and Amazon. I’ve already chucked my VHS…

A great future behind us… Journey to The Far Side of the Sun (1969)

The passing of Neal Armstrong was a timely reminder for those of us who grew up in the 60s that the future is not what it was.

When Gerry Anderson was in his pomp, we were in a state of perpetual improvement: life was just going to get better and better. Technology seemed to make everything possible and…we were going to the stars. The Moon first, then Mars and then beyond… science fiction was close to fact and the race for space was going to help mankind put earthly conflicts to one side as looking back on our single insignificant planet of origin we finally realised that there was a greater destiny beyond our petty disputes.

Anderson’s puppet shows tracked the technological obsessions of the decade and got more and more confident as he progressed from Stingray to Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet. In all three a global entity addressed world-wide issues whether private sector or quasi-governmental… There were global threats too, but these were just confirmation of our need to act in unity.

By the end of the decade as the Moon landing approached, Anderson was successful enough to finally be trusted with a human cast to accompany the breath-taking vehicles of Derek Meddings and co… These were the men who were making our imagined future happen now.

Journey to The Far Side of the Sun (Doppelgänger in the USA) was an attempt at 2001-style inter-spatial-commentary…a look at the inner human condition from the outer-reaches of space. When I first watched the film in the 1970s it left me disappointed because there were no *real* aliens and, whilst the story arc contained the same let down this time – too literal and thin a plot – there is more than enough to enjoy the film as a whole.

Like so many plots from the time, the film starts off with space administrators arguing over how to follow up the discovery of a planet beyond the Sun. The planet is in completely synchronised orbit with the Earth, same distance from the Sun, same vector and thrust… The director of EUROSEC, Jason Webb ( played with panache by Patrick Wymark) makes a passionate case to send a manned expedition but he struggles to convince the other World powers to fund it.

Ian Hendry and Patrick Wymark

A familiar story perhaps but it just feels a little mannered, as does the character of Dr John Kane (played by the excellent Ian Hendry … a year or two from being sorted out by Michael Caine in Get Carter) who is a scientist with doubts and dubious fitness to undertake this arduous exercise.

The breakthrough is achieved and with NASA’s help, a mission is prepared to be led by experienced astronaut Colonel Glenn Ross (Roy Thinnes, who gives a good performance as a man faced with his own destiny…literally).

Roy Thinnes

We go through the routines of training and preparation which gives Anderson the opportunity to show the futuristic craft that were his stock in trade. The scenes involving all of the craft are universally excellent as you’d expect, given a bigger budget than usual and his army of un-matched effects experts.

Lynn Loring

This is the best part of the film as the enterprise builds up momentum and we look forward to the surprise of just what is on our planetary double. It also provides Anderson with the chance to develop his human assets as well with details of space cowboy’s struggling marriage – partly undermined by his enforced infertility: the chance of irradiated sperm mutating was too high.
Lynn Loring – Thinnes actual wife – plays Sharon Ross and adds some uncharacteristic adult themes to Anderson’s film. Loring was featured in several nude scenes which were eventually cut, but she displays a very human sexuality in a series of contemporary almost there fashions…

Lynn Loring

He has a more sympathetic support from his colleague Lise Hartman, a EUROSEC official (Austrian actress Loni von Friedl) at the space centre… but it’s a sub-plot that’s never really taken anywhere.
The two men are pushed by Webb and it’s hard to see this as anything other than a per functionary attempt to create some tension. The story is pretty basic and might have made a decent hour-long episode of Thunderbirds but it feels a little stretched…

Eventually we have take off and the effects are genuinely special here, not quite a match for 2001 but still pretty good, founded in science-reality and not fantasy. The long trip in suspended animation ends as the space craft approaches the mysterious planet.

For some reason I didn’t catch, they crash land (all the more mysterious given the outcome…) and are rescued by a strange being in a metallic suite.

If you haven’t seen the film look away now…

The men are surprised to find their rescuer speaking perfect English and gradually it is revealed that they have landed on a world almost exactly like our own. Everyone they left behind has a counterpart here and all presume that they had turned the craft round and not completed their mission.

Roy Thinnes...  Mirror-World

It takes some time for the realisation to dawn that this is indeed another world and the exact reverse of Earth… a mirror in every respect with hearts on the right, clocks running counter and cars on the wrong side of the road.

Kane dies and Ross is left alone trying to convince the reverse Earth Jason Webb that he needs to be returned to his Earth and this will hopefully help his double to come home…

But, it is not to be and, for some spurious vaguely-scientific reason, the landing craft of this world won’t dock with the other Earth’s space ship and Ross crashes back down to another Earth.

Roy Thinnes

The film is grasping for some profound meaning here but it is a bit thin (sorry Roy…). Whilst getting tremendously excited about the need for and experience of space travel…it’s conclusion that there’s – actually – no place like home is disappointing. It doesn’t know what to do with itself…

That aside, the acting is sincere with Thinnes, Hendry and Wymark being especially impressive. It’s also great to see future UFO stalwarts Ed Bishop and George Sewell and, indeed, some of the kit from this film were reused in that series – a far more satisfying effort form Anderson and perhaps his best.

The great Ed Bishop

UFO was all about build up and action and never really resolved itself as a story… perhaps that was what Anderson did best. He certainly did it brilliantly!

Journey to the Far Side of the Sun is now available on DVD and is well worth seeking out… but I think I’ll stick to my VHS copy... back to the future.