We will have to trek up to South Kensington shortly to see this new exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum: YOU SAY YOU WANT A REVOLUTION: RECORDS & REBELS 1966-1970. Thats a mouthful .... The V&A site says:
This major exhibition will explore the era-defining
significance and impact of the late 1960s, expressed through some of the
greatest music and performances of the 20th century alongside fashion, film,
design and political activism.
I have not been to the V&A for a long time, its such a massive place - but this sounds our kind of show, it runs until February next year. 1966-1970 was a crucial era for me, being 20 to 24 then, and living the London life, going to the Roundhouse (to see The Doors, Jefferson Airplane etc), the NFT, hippie underground clubs like the UFO, seeing 2001 in Cinerama and on acid, loving BLOW-UP etc - I even lived off the Kings Road in Chelsea for a year or so then.
It was not only the fashions, music, movies of the time that were so relevant, but that counterculture era in full swing. Perhaps the political significance of that time is too immense for a mere exhibition to encompass, as it will have to cover quite a lot, from the Paris revolutionaries to the US civil rights protests and the dawning of gay lib.
That perceptive critic Philip Hensher says there is little space given in it to feminism and the nascent gay rights movements: "The curious effect is to make it seem as if the revolutions of the late Sixties were a matter of most concern to heterosexual white people, and only at the margins were black and other non-traditional members of society allowed grudging admission".
It does though capture some of the excitement and the liberation of that era. Being a young gay then I lived through it all, so will be able to see for myself before too long.
As per the attached review, it seems a massive exhibition
headphones and all - well, at £16 a ticket ....
Steve Dinneen of CITY AM says:
The V&A’s David Bowie Is follow-up isn’t concerned with
challenging stereotypes so much as celebrating them. Mannequins in Austin
Powers getup blink with giant eyes; quotes form and disintegrate on the walls;
psychedelic posters and record sleeves clutter every available surface.
It uses the same audio guide as David Bowie Is, detecting
where you’re standing and fading in the appropriate music or speech, allowing
the curators to micro-manage your personal soundtrack; Martin Luther King
blends into advertising muzak blends into The Doors. There are objects of
historical significance – the jacket John Lennon wore in the video for Imagine,
the battered high-backed chair on which Christine Keeler posed naked for Lewis
Morley – but Records and Rebels isn’t aimed at cultural trainspotters. Where it
impresses most is in capturing the breakneck speed at which ideology, music and
fashion shifted over these years, how a perfect storm of influences created a
period of change unlike any before or since.
The first room looks at possible causes for the
“revolution”; the erosion of trust in the establishment (evidenced here by the
Profumo affair), the rise of the civil rights movement, the increasing
popularity of LSD. The exhibition then races through various cultural movements
– fashion, music, protest, consumerism – relying on punchy visuals rather than
display cases and captions; one room features a Vidal Sassoon salon with a
real-life model getting a hair cut, another recreates Woodstock, complete with
faux-grass and beanbags. London is
heralded as the capital of the world, with Carnaby
Street its beating heart (hard to imagine now,
with its rows of bland American chains).
The protest section is a highlight, a cacophony of recorded
speech and angry music, divided into sections on Women’s Lib, the Black
Panthers, Mao’s Cultural Revolution (illustrated with a Little Red Book and a
creepy under-lit bust), France’s May 68 protests and, of course, Vietnam.
Everything is painted in broad strokes and primary colours –
those hoping for nuanced discourse will leave disappointed. But nobody does
mixed-media exhibitions like the V&A. Records and Rebels seamlessly fuses
fashion, music, art and history into a dazzling, chaotic experience that will
leave anyone under 60 with the distinct impression they were born into the
wrong generation.
Here's an oddity: despite my affection for British and Italian cinema I had never heard of SOUVENIR D'ITALIE (or IT HAPPENED IN ROME) a 1957 confection about 3 girls travelling in Italy - its sort of a romantic comedy with lots of scenery, a fascinating view now. But why it is so unknown, ok its just a bit of fluff, but maybe it never even played here - I checked my 1957 "Films and Filming" magazines and there is no review or ads for it (ditto another '57 one filmed in Italy: Diana Dors and Vittorio Gassman in THE GIRL AT THE PALIO set at the famous Palio race in Sienna). 
This one - SOUVENIR D'ITALIE - features prim English girl June Laverick (she wears spectacles!) driving her snazzy sportscar and giving a lift to hitchers Isabelle Corey (the headstrong one) and German Ingeborg Schoner (the sensible one). The car zooms zooms over the cliff into the sea at Portofino, so the gals have to hitch. We see them in Florence,Venice and Pisa before they head to Rome, so yes lots of Italy as it was 50+ years ago. 
