As I write this, a couple who shares the breezeway to my apartment is very loudly having sex. Suffice it to say, there’s a sort of undeniable resonance with Richard Lester’s The Knack… and How to Get It, a film I watched recently and about which I have extraordinarily ambiguous feelings. Playing as part of a TCM British New Wave double feature with Karel Reisz’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, the film is notable for a myriad of reasons. Scattered thoughts, none of them particularly insightful:
1) This won the Palme D’or?!?!?
Which is not to speak of its quality. The career arc of Richard Lester is simply one of the most bizarre and inexplicable in film history. His first feature was It’s Trad, Dad, a cheapie built around the premise of a pair of teenagers trying to get jazz musicians to play a concert in their village and coming into conflict with the local parental boards about it. Though peppered with the charming Brechtian address he’d pepper into his later works, it’s a thoroughly undistinguished work, and gives little hint that just two years later he’d direct the definitive rock-and-roll movie of all time, A Hard Day’s Night. His freewheeling, constantly moving camera (blending direct cinema, French New Wave, and the madcap British comedic tradition into a relentless stir of iconic moments) paired perfectly with the merseybeat sound of the early Beatles, and with their Liverpudlian goof personas. It’s formally innovative, yes, but in service of light, broad comedy that would seem to have very little to do with the broadly ’serious’ themes - personal and philosophical alienation, the effects of decolonization - that colored so many of that decade’s most beloved arthouse nuggets.
But there it is - in a decade where Cannes honored a ton of canon fodder like La Dolce Vita, Blowup, Viridiana, and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, it seems a little weird that smack in the middle of the decade, they gave the award to The Knack …and How To Get It. Certainly the film wears its formal grandeur on its sleeve - part Brechtian Greek comedy, with a chorus of disapproving older generation types repeating ‘mods and rockers’ with frustration at odd times, part dazzlingly romantic vision of youth in disarray, with impossibly perfect black-and-white compositions and wistful glockenspiel cues (the score was by John Barry!), and part madcap tasteless examination of the battle of the sexes, with some ambiguous sexism and extended reference to rape that may have played as daring in 1965 but is just pretty tasteless in 2007.
2. But yeah - let’s talk about that rape stuff some more. For those who don’t know, the basic plot is that Colin (Michael Crawford, later the Phantom of the Opera) is trying to learn about the art of seducing women from Tolen (Ray Brooks). They find each other rivals when they encounter the innocent and aloof Nancy (Rita Tushingham). But really, the film isn’t very interested in this plot, which is why it actually takes up about 20 minutes worth of the film itself. The last twenty minutes feature Nancy, having had a near-sexual encounter with one of the men, dashing about town screaming rape as Tolen and Colin try to catch up with her. It’s played for low comedy, and perhaps it’s simply that I don’t get it, but it’s not particularly funny. It’s this sort of insanely toxic, grossly misogynistic sequence tossed into an otherwise mostly innocent film. Has anyone who’s seen this got any sort of explanation for what exactly I’m supposed to be experiencing here?
3. Rita Tushingham’s unconventional beauty - a sort of unharmonious cuteness that’s as alien as it is human. Has there ever been another major young actress (besides Maggie Gyllenhaal) who’s been able to do so much with just how off she looks? Affecting a sort of crosseyed deer in the headlights look, alternately shrieking and shrinking, Tushingham’s Nancy is a beguiling comic creation.
4. This film, for those who are interested in the craft, is a masterclass in black-and-white cinematography.
More thoughts on recently-viewed films coming soon.
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