Entertainment For Lively Minds
Lindsay Anderson
Posted by Bingham on 30 January 2011 - 4:29am.
Watching If and Oh Lucky Man thought I'd post this an unheralded man
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Oh Lucky Man
Alan Price doesn't have to worry about being unheralded, he can hear the "kaching" of recognition every time the Animals' version of 'House of the Rising Sun' is played, the credit reading "Trad, arr Alan Price".
Amen to that Brother Chris
I wrote about Price's grand theft larceny in my blog.
Amen to that Brother Chris
I wrote about Price's grand theft larceny in my blog.
One of my favourite films.....
Still remember seeing this as a young teenager on a Sunday night on BBC2. Britannia Hospital completes the Mick Travis trilogy. Malcolm McDowell is also one of my favourite actors. Message complete.
If...
I'm a big fan of the 'trilogy'. I remember seeing Brittania Hospital when I was about 12, with my Dad, on telly. I was a entertained by it.
Later, I saw If on telly, again at about 17 - an excellent age for it. I loved it. It was one of those films that I watched weekly for a few years.
Finally, when O' Lucky Man came out on video in the late 90s, I got that and was blown away, although I was a bit spooked by the chap that Mick finds covered up to his head in the research hospital bed...
The soundtrack is fantastic. I think the songs work really well in the film and by themselves. Having the band actually in the film was another good idea.
I think Malcolm is a bit limited in his range, but nobody does the 'You're shit' look better than him. Which is idea for this. Even better for If...
If...
...was filmed at the school I went to. Being a not-wealthy scholarship boy, I had a bit of a miserable time there, and was delighted when I first saw the film. The gun emplacements were on the roof of what's known as the New Block, where the maths and history depts were in my day. Gave me happy fantasies of mowing down my more cunty contemporaries by the dozen.
I'm all better now.
You have to give the Beak some credit
for actually allowing the film to be made there, don't you think, given that other schools pulled out once they'd sussed the plot?
I too
was a scholarship boy at a public school and boy did the majority of pupils, teachers and parents keep reminding me and my parents of that fact. Luckily I did English and the teachers of that department were enlightended as was, in fairness, the Beak.
Cunty contemporaries just about sums it up. I look back now at the few people I was friends with: two were gay, two were black, one was disabled the remaining handful were boys and girls who read books, acted in plays, listened to all kinds of music and generally responded to physical and verbal abuse (generally from those who played rugby/cheer-led in rugby tops) with a pithy comment and a smile of pity.
One of the main "players" at the school (who was in the 1st XV) actually kicked his younger brother out of his flat in London when he came out and refused to have anything more to do with him. Lovely chap. I took Ma Bisto along with me to a reunion in Brighton about 10 years after I'd left because one of my friends from the school begged us to go because he was convinced that he was going to be beaten up by some of the attendees, word having gotten round that he was gay.
I'm all better now but then again I was never unduly affected because I could play cricket and so was tolerated despite hanging around with "poofters" and "jungle bunnies".
So If and to a lesser extent Another Country were a big deal to me in those formative public school years but compared to some of the other outsiders I hung around with I had it easy. The whole experience taught me that it's not what your politics are that I give a damn about it's how civil you are to a fellow human being.
Ooh, a raw nerve has been touched I think. As you were.
If
had a profound effect on me too. I too attended a similar establishment.
Unfortunately, the woman who ran the local cafe where we would escape for buns and strawberry Nesquik looked nothing like the lissome and wanton creature in the film. Think a cross between Nora Batty and The Medusa with a personality to match and you'd be close. So I never got to writhe around on the cafe floor with Missa Luba playing in the background. Probably for the best. Apart from being a great film, I will always be indebted to Anderson for introducing me to that incredible piece of music.
As for Price, a pleasant enough voice and I do love the theme for Lucky Man but not quite a first rank talent and not even in the same league as his sometime collaborator Georgie Fame who was a greater performer and bigger influence on British pop and rock of the 60s and 70s.
Below a montage of clips from If and some of that unforgettable music
Raw nerves.
Yeah, I had whole clusters of raw nerves on this subject once upon a time. I try to be at peace with it. But some of the insecurities and fears that underpin the parts of my character that I'm less keen on are directly attributable to my experience of school. If it hadn't been for that period of my life, I don't doubt I'd be less argumentative, competitive, envious and intellectually snobby. I maybe wouldn't have quite such a problem with thinking I'm cleverer than I probably am, too: it's just that, for several very formative years, all I had was brains and musicality. I couldn't compete any other way, so I just persuaded myself that all my contemporaries were thick, which - in fairness - some of them were. And my friends were the geeks - one of whom is the most gifted person I will probably ever meet. So I was used to being one of the clever kids and using it as a defence. It's hard to shake that attitude off.
Fucking hell, paging Dr. Freud, we have a tedious public self-examination taking place on Ward 12. Sorry everyone.
Don,t forget This Sporting Life either...
starring Richard Harris as a hard as nails rugby player who didn,t give a shit about anyone--made a lasting impression on the younger me, especially as i was the loose head prop forward on the school team at the time.
This sporting life
I watched it for the first time last year & thought it was a really good film.
Dont think Richard Harris was ever better.
Brilliant movie.
By Christ it's bleak.
It's Grim
Up North
Anderson is shamefully unlauded as a UK filmmaker
"If" and "O Lucky Man" are both astonishing movies - I really think the latter is a masterpiece - yet, Lindsay Anderson never comes up as one of our great directors. I still have the original vinyl soundtrack album of OLM, in one of those nice thick gatefold sleeves there used to be so many of...
Fans are pointed towards "Never Apologize" [sic], the film of Malcolm McDowell's one-man show about working with Anderson on these movies. (clip at http://www.neverapologize.com/mcdowell.html)
I have that LP too.
It's a lovely deep red, and nicely understated. The CD just can't compete with glorious gatefolds like that.
O Lucky Man
is one of my earliest memories of seeing nudity on the TV. The fact that it was Captain Mainwaring engineering the showing of a porn film only made it more memorable and confusing to my impressionable younger self. It's a wondeful film, truly unique and terrifying in equal measure, with some of finest visual allegories ever committed to celluloid in my 'umble opinion. The use of Alan Price and his band as a Greek chorus is inspired. Brave and singular-minded filmmaking that we rarely see anymore.