Khartoum. again.

KHARTOUM, 1966. I had forgotten how good KHARTOUM is, directed by stalwart Basil Dearden, and 2nd Unit (presumably those battle scenes) by veteran Yakima Canutt (the chariot race in BEN-HUR etc). It has two towering performances - Charlton Heston, steadfast as usual, as General Gordon, in his element unpeeling the layers of Gordon's complex character,  and a mesmerising turn (in a handful of scenes, but dominating the film) by Laurence Olivier as The Madhi - 

he is almost unrecognisable, blacked up here. This was Olivier's great late period, running the National Theatre, films like TERM OF TRIAL and BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING (where he is almost ordinary) He was also playing OTHELLO to great acclaim at the time, also blacked up as the Moor, (it was also filmed, with Maggie Smith), after those iconic performances in RICHARD III, THE PRINCE AND THE SHOWGIRL, THE ENTERTAINER and SPARTACUS.
His Madhi is a stunning creation.  The film is quite topical now, showing as it does the confrontation between Western imperialism and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism - this time in the Sudan of the 19th century. Fascinating for those interested in its history and that of Egypt.
Add in Ralph Richardson on prime form as Gladstone, and familiar faces like Richard Johnson, Marne Maitland, Peter Arne, Nigel Green, Michael Hordern, Alexander Knox, Douglas Wilmer, Johnny Sekka. The story of how General Gordon (a fanatic to some) manages to hold Khartoum as the Madhi's forces attack is well told here and its totally engrossing as the beseiged city holds off the Madhi's forces., also effective is that opening sequence as the British army is led deeper and deeper into the remote Sudan as the Madhi's forces wait to attack ...

I didn't want to see it back in 1966 (when I was 20 and there were more trendy movies around), but seeing it now its marvellously done, with Heston back at what he does best, after his tepid performance in THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY the year before, where Rex Harrison had the showier role as Pope Julius (as per recent review of that). Dearden too was branching out into international films after those British classics like POOL OF LONDON, THE BLUE LAMP, SAPPHIRE, VICTIM ....

That Blow-Up bluray ...

Its better than I imagined, after only having the bog standard dvd for years. As in the recent 4-disk LUDWIG pack, there is another chunky 64 page booklet, 1960s interviews with Antonioni, two interviews with David Hemmings from 1968 and 1977, that long 2016 interview with Vanessa Redgrave, a Jane Birkin interview, a marvellous documentary featuring people involved with the making of the film, including model Jill Kennington, and more. It puts it all in proper context, and yes the park and the studio and London then in 1966 - which I knew as I was 20 there then - are all just perfect. Even the street I lived in, Draycott Place, SW3 in 1972-73, crops up, as its next to that restaurant. We return to the park and studio as they are now too. Lots more at labels ... one funny thing: the characters are never named, but Hemmings is Thomas, Vanessa is Jane, Sarah is Patricia, Castle is Bill, Bowles is Ron.
The booklet points out something I and most other viewers miss, no matter how often we have seen it. As Thomas is driving through London, after leaving the park, just as the girl puts the protest placard in his car, the car following has the Jane from the park and her accomplice (we see her in her check shirt) who are following him, which is how she is able to turn up at his studio just as he arrives back - I never got that before. They were also trying to get into his car while he is in the restaurant, but that sequence was cut short by producer Ponti. 

There were two video-cassettes of BLOW-UP, then the dvd - I always loved the soundtrack album, on vinyl and cd, and now finally the bluray - its Region 1 though, 

A new BLOW-UP

Finally, its on Blu-ray and dvd in a new Criterion edition released on 28 March. For far too long there has only been a standard dvd, with a terrible commentary track by a professor presumably discussing the film with a class of American teenagers who knew nothing about the Swinging Sixties or cast members like Vanessa Redgrave .... it is hilarious for all the wrong reasons.

I have written about Antonioni's BLOW-UP so many times already, so this is just a summary of the new edition. I was going to watch the dvd as part of my new year re-views, but we will be waiting till March now. Here is the Criterion blurb and contents:

In 1966, Michelangelo Antonioni transplanted his existentialist ennui to the streets of swinging London for this international sensation, the Italian filmmaker’s first English-language feature. A countercultural masterpiece about the act of seeing and the art of image making, Blow-Up takes the form of a psychological mystery, starring David Hemmings as a fashion photographer who unknowingly captures a death on film after following two lovers in a park. Antonioni’s meticulous aesthetic control and intoxicating color palette breathe life into every frame, and the jazzy sounds of Herbie Hancock, a beautifully evasive performance by Vanessa Redgrave, and a cameo by the Yardbirds make the film a transporting time capsule from a bygone era. Blow-Up is a seductive immersion into creative passion, and a brilliant film by one of cinema’s greatest artists.

New, restored 4K digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray

New pieces about director Michelangelo Antonioni’s artistic approach, featuring photography curators Walter Moser and Philippe Garner and art historian David Alan Mellor

Blow Up of “Blow Up,” a 2016 documentary on the making of the film

Conversation from 2016 between Garner and actor Vanessa Redgrave

Archival interviews with Antonioni and actors David Hemmings and Jane Birkin

Trailers

PLUS: A book featuring an essay by film scholar David Forgacs, an updated 1966 account of the film’s shooting by Stig Björkman, the questionnaires the director distributed to photographers and painters while developing the film, and the 1959 Julio Cortázar short story on which the film is loosely based.

Of course the plot does not bear too much examining. How for instance, in that pre-internet world,  does the mystery woman Vanessa Redgrave turn up at the photographer's studio just as he arrives back, when she does not seem to know who he is in the park, let alone where he lives or works. They must have followed him from the park, via that detour to the Chelsea restaurant (which I used to know, as I lived near it in '72/'73). 
There was supposed to be more about someone rifling through his car there, but producer Ponti nixed the rest of that sequence. The whole murder in the park and leaving the body undiscovered there seems all a bit far-fetched, but one is swept up in the mystery of it all, and that perfect London 1966 ambience. 
I was 20 and part of it all then. It was of course the film to see and have an opinion on when it opened in London early in 1967 before going to the Cannes Festival. Terence Stamp too is on record about it, as he had been promised the part, and is still annoyed about it .... David Hemmings though delivers a major performance as the typical disillusioned Antonioni male - he had been fairly nondescript up till then,  but was soon the icon of the era. 
We just love the images and the spaces - that park, that studio, London changing as it was then, and that perfect Herbie Hancock soundtrack, which has stayed with me, on vinyl, CD, and ipod. Now for the Blu-ray ...

If you’ve never seen Blowup before, prepare yourself for one of the cinema’s most unique experiences. If you have seen it before, prepare as well for rediscovering—much like the film’s hero—something you only thought you knew.

Back to the Sixties at the V&A ....

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

https://www.creativereview.co.uk/decade-disruption-vas-say-want-revolution-records-rebels-1966-70/

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.

Vanessa on BLOW-UP again ...

Thanks to Daryl for emailing me about a new Vanessa Redgrave interview where she discusses making the 1966 Antonioni film BLOW-UP in considerable detail - the interview is 42 minutes - for when you have the time. 

She also discussed filming with Antonioni and his directing methods in that 1993 British documentary series we like HOLLYWOOD UK (right), hosted by director Richard Lester, where she shows what Antonioni wanted from her, how he wanted her to sit and move her body and be part of the fabric of what he was creating. Fascinating stuff for those who still regard this cult classic. 

As the You/Tube text states:

To celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Antonioni's iconic film Blow-Up, the team behind Fashion & Cinema - a series of events, on-stage conversations and screenings exploring the relationship between fashion and cinema - bring together legendary actress Vanessa Redgrave CBE and photography expert and Deputy Chairman of Christie's Philippe Garner, co-author of the book Antonioni's Blow-Up. The film shaped understandings of contemporary fashion photography and shocked with its portrait of London in the swinging sixties, casual sex, drugs and rock’n’roll. Director Antonioni consulted local journalists to help build a picture of the lifestyle of the most fashionable young photographers. David Hemmings's character is a composite of elements that reference David Bailey, Terence Donovan, David Montgomery and John Cowan, whose studio became a principal set.
(Terence Stamp still insists it was all about him and he had been promised the part by the Italian maestro. I have the Garner coffee-table book on the film, which covers it all, with those great images we like so much)..

Vanessa is now on stage here in London in the Ralph Fiennes RICHARD III, being broadcast to cinemas on July 21, we shall be watching. I saw her on stage twice, in a 1973 stylish production of Coward's DESIGN FOR LIVING, and sometime in the '80s in Martin (BENT) Sherman's odd A MADHOUSE IN GOA, Vanessa always mesmerises on stage. 

Another fascinating 1960s interview with Vanessa here:

Summer re-runs: You're A Big Boy Now, 1966

Summer re-runs for a rainy afternoon:

YOU'RE A BIG BOY NOW - Francis Ford Coppola's delightful 1966 coming-of-age comedy.

Bernard Chanticleer (Peter Kastner) is an ordinary young man anxious to step out into the "adult world". His plan is to move out of his parents' Long Island house into an eight-floor Greenwich Village walk-up - and to try and convince someone to share his new "liberated lifestyle". This was Francis Ford Coppola's UCLA Film School master's thesis - and a hilarious, high-speed debut in film comedy for the future director of THE GODFATHER and APOCALPSE NOW. Fresh off A PATCH OF BLUE Elizabeth Hartman suitably plays the kooky spiteful actress who toys with Bernard. Karen Black makes her debut as the nice girl Bernard overlooks and Geraldine Page nearly steals the show with her Academy Award-nominated performance as Bernard's possessive mother.

Go-go dancer and actress Barbara Darling (Elizabeth Hartman)

My pal Stan and I loved this when we were 20 (at Balham ABC in '67) and I had not seen it since. It brings it all back - being 19 or 20, living in the big city - that soundtrack by John Sebastian and The Lovin Spoonful. I loved that sound then: "Did you ever have to make up your mind", "Warm Baby" etc. Its certainly a free-wheeling zany take on the standard coming-of-age scenario (a more funny ALL FALL DOWN, another one I like) and for me as essential a 60s romp as THE KNACK or our English equivalent of this, HERE WE GO ROUND THE MULBERRY BUSH. It captures that mid-60s look too.
The cast here is the thing: Elizabeth Hartman as the man-hating actress and go-go dancer Barbara Darling who gets our hapless hero in her thrall. We see flashbacks to her youth, laughing at horror flicks like THE PIT AND THE PENDELUM ... Kastner is just right as Benjamin, with Tony Bill as his colleague at the New York Central Library (we were back there recently with THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW), where Bernard's father is curator of the secret pornography section which Miss Thing stumbles into.... did I not mention Miss Thing? - she is Bernard's landlady and is the great Julie Harris and she is wonderful here ... there is the rooster guarding the corridor and who attacks girls; and then we have the equally wonderful Geraldine Page (above) as Bernard's mother, with Rip Torn as his father.  This was based on a popular book by David Benedictus which I remember reading at the time. It reminds me a lot too of that zany free-wheeling HAROLD AND MAUDE.

Miss Harris as Miss Thing - see Harris label for her very nice note to me in 1977

It is all fresh, zany, funny, everything about being young and captures that time perfectly. Good to see this Seven Arts production again now as part of the Warner Archive Collection (no-frills dvds) and great to see theatre legends and friends Page and Harris enjoying themselves here. Elizabeth Hartman was that very individual actress (also in THE GROUP, THE FIXER, THE BEGUILED) who later committed suicide - and Karen Black (before her hits like FIVE EASY PIECES, NASHVILLE or AIRPORT 75) is the nice girl our hero will of course run around New York with at the end with the dog, called of course Dog. We are 20 again when we see this. I must have another look at Lumet's THE GROUP soon...  
I have just seen on IMDB: Peter Kastner 1943-2008, aged 64, he was also in another interesting '60s one: NOBODY WAVED GOODBYE, a Canadian indie in 1964.

1971: Golden year for music?

A new tome on the key albums of 1971 should be worth investigating - as long as it is not as heavy as that recent book on 1966 (which I reviewed a while back). The author here, music jounalist David Hepworth, makes a good case for 1971 being a golden year, and looking at the key albums of that year I tend to agree - I was 25 then and deeply into music as vinyl record albums were entering their golden period.

Music fans of course will have their own golden period (that 1964-67 period was terrific for me too) - that time of their first immersion into pop culture, for younger people it may be the punk or disco years of the late 70s, but that singer-songwriter was at its peak in the early '70s as music by black artists like Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Roberta Flack and Sly Stone evolved and caught the changing times. Led Zeppelin and The Who also released some of their best work - the Zepps were not for me, but I loved The Who's WHO'S NEXT - and of course The Doors L A WOMAN (having seen them at that all-nighter in 1968, as mentioned before) then there were The Rolling Stones ... and Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton did some great stuff too and Rod and Elton were at their early best. Joni and Carole dominated the year too with their enduring albums - Carole is even doing TAPESTRY in full at a concert in London's Hyde Park this July, 45 years after recording the album ...

How about this lot all from 1971:  A golden year indeed! I had them all at the time .... and a lot still now. One could say in 1971 rock was still inventing itself, we did not realise how lucky we were to be living through it at the ideal age - but we do now. Of course the next year 1972 brought us Stevie Wonder's TALKING BOOK and seeing and meeting Joni again - see label - and '73 ushered in Pink Floyd's DARK SIDE OF THE MOON as the long-playing vinyl album took over the world - see Music-1 label. 

• Marvin Gaye – Whats Going On
• Sly & Family Stone – There’s A Riot Going On
• Carole King – Tapestry
• Joni Mitchell – Blue
• James Taylor - Mud Slide Slim
• David Bowie – Hunky Dory
• Rolling Stones – Sticky Fingers
• Doors – LA Woman
• John Lennon – Imagine
• Janis Joplin – Pearl
• Carly Simon - First album 
• Elton John – Madman Across The Water
• Rod Stewart – Every Picture Tells A Story
• Cat Stevens – Teaser and the  Firecat
• Nilsson – Nilsson Schmilsson
• Traffic – Low Spark of High Heel Boys
• Jeff Beck – Rough and Ready
• Van Morrison – Tupelo Honey
• Led Zeppelin IV
• Who – Who’s Next
• Emerson Lake & Palmer – Pictures at an Exhibition
• The Band – Cahoots
• Barbra Streisand – Stoney End, Barbara Joan Streisand

1966 and all that ...

Its official, 1966 is now 50 years ago - those of us who were young then, and there will have fond memories .... as I shall return to.

After some good reviews I just had to order this new book by music journalist Jon Savage, taking us through the year month by month, mainly focusing on the music - all those fab singles out every week and those groundbreaking albums. I did not realise though it would be such a heavy tome of 650 pages ... too big to carry around for casual reading on the train!  Let's look at the blurb:

2016 will see the 50th anniversary of defining year in global pop cultural history, 1966. Jon Savage's exploration of the key highs, lows and revolutionary moments, will be at the centre of reflection on what made that year so uniquely resonant. extraordinary year in popular culture.

'The 'Sixties', as we have come to know them, hit their Modernist peak. A unique chemistry of ideas, substances, freedom of expression and dialogue across pop cultural continents created a landscape of immense and eventually shattering creativity. After 1966 nothing in the pop world would ever be the same. The 7 inch single outsold the long-player for the final time.

Jon Savage's 1966 is a monument to the year that shaped the pop future of the balance of the century. Exploring canonical artists like The Beatles, The Byrds, Velvet Underground, The Who and The Kinks, 1966 also goes much deeper into the social and cultural heart of the decade through unique archival primary sources.

From Haight Ashbury to pirate radio, via the prosecution of the Rollling Stones and the arrival of the first double-album by a major artist (Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde), 1966 represents both a watershed and a high water mark in post war culture,

This book has music at its heart – whether looking at Joe Meek, Motown, Stax, the Velvet Underground, the Byrds, the Kinks, the Who, Jimi Hendrix, the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band or Tom Jones; music both reflected the times and changed them. From songs of protest – to those lampooning the protesters - from folk rock to soul and the emergence of rock, music pours forth from the pages and will make you reach for your own collections to play those songs, which still sound so fresh and relevant today

England was at the forefront of the new changes in the air, a trend picked up by TIME magazine with their Swinging London cover story ..... other British successes included all those trendy films, the new Hovercraft crossing the channel on a cushion of air, the Harrier Jump Jet, and of course England winning the World  Cup. But what did 1966 mean to me? How was I living then? 

Well I was just 20, and finally left my bedsitter/furnished room in North London where I had been since I arrived in London in April 1964, aged 18. My younger brother had arrived in London too and took over my room, as I moved on .... I had found a room in smart Bayswater, sharing a large apartment in Queens Gardens - where I played Bob Dylan and Francoise Hardy 4-track Extended Play disks, and Paul Simon's "I Am A Rock", and The Beatles RUBBER SOUL was still top of the charts - as would their REVOLVER later that year.  . I could walk up to Notting Hill Gate at night, for late night movies at the Classic Cinema, and began exploring the city and going to the theatre. There were some good shows that year: FUNNY GIRL with that new sensation Barbara Streisand - which I saw from the front row! and THE ROYAL HUNT OF THE SUN up in the cheap seats at the Old Vic. THE KING'S MARE was an amusing comedy about Henry VIII and Anne of Cleves, which I enjoyed and some evening when I was out in theatreland I passed the stage door and there was actress Jane Merrow so we had a great conversation - as she sang a song in the play based on a Bob Dylan tune ... I had liked her in THE SYSTEM - it turned out she was David Hemmings' girlfriend at the time. I did not know then that he was off making BLOW-UP for Antonioni at the time - that would be the sensation of 1967 in the then swinging city. We prowled around the Prince of Wales theatre too hoping (in vain) to see Streisand - but got her co-star Kay Medford instead. There was also Ingrid Bergman's success in A MONTH IN THE COUNTRY, I got the cast autographs for that - and was taken backstage by a showbiz acquintance to meet the cast of the hilarious THE ANNIVERSARY and they all signed the programme: Michael Crawford, Sheila Hancock, Mona Washbourne, June Ritchie, Jack Hedley, James Cossins - most of them were in the 1968 film.

The movies just kept coming: I joined the crowd at the premiere of MODESTY BLAISE hoping Monica Vitti would be there, she was not but I saw Dirk Bogarde with Rosella Falk (Mrs Fothergill) on his arm, Monica, Dirk and Terry were my pin-ups of the year.. Other hits of the year were Bergman's PERSONA, Lelouch's UNE HOMME ET UNE FEMME (where Anouk Aimee was perfection, when not endlessly fiddling with her hair), and Sophia Loren and Gregory Peck wonderful together in ARABESQUE - a very 60s confection. WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? was a stunner Malle's VIVA MARIA has the 'house full' sign up when a friend and I turned up to see it at The Curzon in Mayfair. (still here, for now, as the developers move in). "Films and Filming" and "Sight & Sound" kept us up to date with all the new movies.  

I used to go to the big Classic cinema in Baker Street for revivals (not having a television then), and that new vegetarian store Cranks had opened next to it, I was in there one day and there was a small Japanese woman shopping next to me - I knew she was Yoko Ono, then (before John Lennon) a performance artist and avant garde film-maker (her film with all those naked bottoms!)  who featured in those new Sunday supplements. Another Sunday supplement regular was artist David Hockney - I went too to one of those new gay bars in Pembridge Road, Notting Hill - and recognised him there - looking at me, with the peroxide hair and the round glasses - perhaps he was over from California? I did not linger though and left after finishing my drink .... perhaps if I had stayed I might have been one of those boys in a blue pool ...

It was time though to move again - we moved a lot in those days, sharing apartments for maybe 6 monhs or so. Now it was on to West Kensington sharing a pad with 2 friends of a friend - it was just a temporary thing - Julie Christie it seemed lived in an apartment block there which we passed a lot, but never saw her., I saw that famous World Cup win there on a small black and white set (it was still the era of just two TV channels - imagine! - which closed down early and no colour) - no wonder young people were out making music and being creative and creating their own events. 

Finally, that autumn it was down to Clapham South, where I became a South London boy, sharing another flat with Stanley - who turned out to be my best friend, until he died in 1992 - we sharing flats on and off up to the early '70s and again later in the mid-80s before romance took me off to the South Coast for a decade or more .... We finally got television then, and that new trendy station BBC2 opened - LATE NIGHT LINE UP, MAN ALIVE documentaries - including one on those still illegal gays dancing in their clubs and wearing white polo neck sweaters; the popular soap THE NEWCOMERS, and crime series Z-CARS and even DIXON OF DOCK GREEN; DR WHO (Patrick Troughton) at Saturday teatime followed by THE SIMON DEE SHOW - all in shades of gray, and Sunday afternoon drama serials like a great THREE MUSKETEERS with Jeremy Brett, and KENILWORTH.on BBC2. It was also the year of that hard-ditting drama CATHY COME HOME and saw the start of Alf Garnett in TILL DEATH DO US PART. Later in the decade we loved those comedy shows like ME MAMMY (Anna Manahan and Milo O'Shea) and BEGGAR MY NEIGHBOUR where June Whitfield (still going now) had a knowing twinkle in her eye whenever mentioning a neighbour who "lived down by the maisonettes and was good to his mother". 

We began frequenting the West End coffee bars and early gay discos when the teens danced to Tamla Motown - The LE DEUCE in D'Arblay Street was a particular favourite.. So, 1966 ended on a high - but 1967 would be even better: as psychedelia hit London (we already liked that West Coast sound of The Mamas and Papas, and the New York combo The Lovin' Spoonful), BLOW-UP hit town in March and it was like seeing oneself up there on the screen, and then The Beatles released SERGEANT PEPPER .... Stan and I and Linda, the girl upstairs, went stark raving mad. We went to see The Stax Tour, just before Otis Redding took that fatal flight. 1968 brought Aretha Franklin to town and I joined the hippie set seeing The Doors and Jefferson Airplane at the Roundhouse at Camden, where everyone was on acid - ditto at 2001 A SPACE ODYSSEY in Cinerama and so much more, like going to the Middle Earth club in Covent Garden and getting the hippie magazine "International Times" and that new weekly listings mag "Time Out" ...  Above right, me sporting the tousled Rolling Stone look on Clapham Common in '66.

Monica Vitti in 1977 ...

and some new photos from MODESTY BLAISE, 1966 ..... does Sixties glamour get any better?

Thanks too, once again, to Colin for finding me the January 2 1977 UK "Sunday Times" colour supplement, with Monica on the cover and an interview with her inside. I had this at the time but misplaced it over the years. Fascinating to see it again, and it also has an interview with the young Ian McKellen. Here's what it says on Monica then ...

“Monica Vitti was that high-strung lady who floated through those starkly beautiful Antonioni films of the early Sixties like L’AVVENTURA and LA NOTTE. In Italy these days she has, surprisingly, made herself a new reputation a a comedienne but in her next film MIMI BLUETTE she plays a more symbolic role. The setting is pre-1914 Paris; she plays the part of a dancer who goes from country to country searching in vain for her lover”. It was a project MGM bought for Garbo back in the 1920s, but was never made.

So starts a “Sunday Times Magazine” feature on Vitti in their colour magazine, dated 2 January 1977, where Monica is interviewed at her Rome apartment by Meriel  McCooey and photographed by Eva Sereny.

Vitti is a remarkable looking woman, a combination of strength and delicacy, Her fashionably untidy, silky blonde hair surrounds a fine-skinned face quite a stubborn jaw, all illuminated by alert green eyes, her nose has a slight curve and she avoids being photographed in profile.

In her Rome apartment which looks out on the Tiber, she was wearing a pastel patchwork dress trimmed with different laces which she picks up in markets and second-hand shops. She looked like a hippie butterfly and the effect was calculatingly ethereal. Her sitting-room is filled with priceless bric-a-brac, Tiffany lamps, oriental rugs, good sculpture, a coffee-table overflowing with non-coffee-table books, and pink and white blossom everywhere. “I bought this flat 16 years ago with the money from my first film. But I was so insecure that I kept all my clothes at my mother’s and used to go home to sleep”.

She was reading theatre notices in “The Sunday Times”  spread out over her huge cretonne-covered sofa. She reads in English, French and Italian, and in a husky come-to-bed voice speaks a little English, a lot of French and an enormous amount of quick-fire Italian. “I would love to go back to the theatre. I started in Rome (her hometown) when I was 14. I played a woman of 45 covered with lines and a snow-white wig. I thought that was what a woman of 45 looked like. But I did have this deep throbbing voice. When I began making films I was physically very different from the ideal Italian beauty. Loren and Lollobrigida were much more acceptable. But something happened with Michelangelo and myself – together we invented some stories, using little bits of autobiography, a soupcon in L’AVVENTURA, some in LA NOTTE. I was living materal".

In Antonioni’s films, Vitti seemed like to express the boredoms and tensions of modern women. You felt she was caged and longed to escape, vulnerable, trapped, brought to the brink by her environment.

“Antonioni was the only Italian director who told the woman’s story. The only creative man to take their problems seriously. After me, he didn’t make stories about women. We lived together for seven years. He still has the apartment above and we see each other constantly. He is my best friend.”  They did not contemplate marriage - “I decided at 12 that I didn’t want to marry. It’s a terrible life, so enclosed. Anyway, there are too many children in the world, why add mine."

"When we parted I had to change. I wanted to do comedy …. But it was difficult to get the audience to accept me, they were waiting for this neurotic woman.” Now she is very popular, she has made many hilarious comedies, such as THE GIRL WITH THE PISTOL and THE PIZZA TRIANGLE and THE SCARLET LADY, which are seldom shown outside Italy. She bought the rights to MIMI BLUETTE three years ago – the film was made by Carlo Di Palma last October in France and Morocco.  

“But I hate to fly. I went to Africa by car, it took five days there and 5 back. I refused a lot of work in America because of this, though Antonioni and I once went to New York and Mexico. But I was terrified in America, I didn’t like to watch the way the women get old. Anyway I love Europe, its so original, so full of faults."

Nowadays she says she lives alone: “A very simple life. When I’m not working I go to the cinema every night. Sometimes its very difficult. I am three dangerous things: a woman, an actress and not married, so I suppose I will work until I’m ninety.”

Flash-forward to now and Monica, in her 80s, has been in seclusion for some years, - as per other posts on her, see label. MIMI BLUETTE never made it to the UK either and seems unobtainable now. She married Roberto Russo in 1995 according to IMDB ., Antonioni died in 2007 - here they are with Alain Delon at Cannes in 1962 for the screening of L'ECLISSE.  

Modesty, again.

More 1966 - to complement the documentary on BLOW-UP locations, below, from yesterday, here is the trailer for Losey's misunderstood op-art pop-art spy spoof MODESTY BLAISE (which some consider dated now), a key movie for me when I was 20 in 1966 and had discovered Monica Vitti in those early '60s Antonioni films - 
Monica was actually a comedienne which she returned to successfully during the '60s and '70s - as per my other posts on her. Add in Dirk Bogarde being screamingly camp as arch-villain Gabriel with the blonde wig and those sunglasses, and Terry Stamp as that bit of rough Willie Garvin and all those wonderful moments, a lot of which are captured here. 
I was at the premiere in Leicester Square and saw Bogarde with Rosella Falk (Mrs Fothergill!) on his arm - Monica was not there, but was at the premiere of DARLING with Dirk and Julie Christie in 1965 (above), when they were filming MODESTY. We love this Losey with the Dankworth score, and the full movie is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BpC0NatYqU

Blow-Up locations documentary

I am overjoyed to discover this 16 minute documentary by Daniel Ammeter on YouTube. Thanks to Colin for sending me the details. I have always meant to go to Maryon Park so until I do, this is the next best thing. Daniel has crafted a loving tribute to the film utilising locations as they are now, or were in 2011 when he shot this. I love the park and those streets. The glamour and drama of BLOW-UP, a great London film, never goes away, even after almost 50 years, its timeless for me. Its also one of the great mystery films - people have debated if there really is a body in the park (I say yes), but also on a more mundane level,  how does she know where he lives and turns up just as he arrives back! and where does Sarah Miles fit in ... There are several books on the film too. 

This is what I said on YouTube: Marvellous. BLOW-UP is one of my favourite films, I was 21 when it opened in 1967 in London and it was the movie to see and have an opinion on it was like seeing one's self on screen. I love that Herbie Hancock soundtrack too and have had it on vinyl, cd and ipod. I keep meaning to go to Maryon Park, so this is the next best thing. Hemmings was marvellous here - a petulant cherub starting to realise the emptiness of his superficially glamorous existance. David died in 2003 and he has a simple headstone in a Wiltshire churchyard, but thankfully got to write his memoirs before he died aged 62, he covers the making of BLOW UP in detail. 
I lived near that 'white restaurant' in early 70s, in Draycott Avenue, off Kings Road. It is THE 60s film for me, and it never dates, I like Antonioni's other films too. I would like to copy this for my own blog, where I write about the film quite a bit. 
Here is the link in case of any problem, or to see it on the full-size YouTube page:  https://youtu.be/z-e4LglIQWQ

More of course on BLOW-UP at the usual labels: BLOW-UP, Antonioni, Hemmings, Redgrave, Miles, London.
The BLOW-UP locations are also featured in that BBC series HOLLYWOOD UK, first screened in 1993, where Richard Lester and others re-visit British and London locations - see review and photos at London label, or 16 July 2012 archive. 
There's also this:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FPIaZfQCbY

Who's afraid of ....

Just one priceless moment from WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? - Elizabeth doing Bette's "What A Dump" - from BEYOND THE FOREST of course! 

Back to the BLOW-UP ...

No film captures Sixties London as perfectly as BLOW-UP. Thanks to Daryl for sending me details of a new exhibition in Switzerland (there was one, maybe the same, in Vienna recently, for which I wrote the piece below...). The Swiss one says: "The cult film "Blow-Up" by Michelangelo Antonioni (1966) occupies a central position in the history of film as well as that of art and photography. No other film has shown and sounded out the diverse areas of photography in such a differentiated way. The photographic range of ’Blow-Up’ is highly diversified and ranges from fashion photography and social reportage to abstract photography.. For the first time in Switzerland the exhibition at the Fotomuseum Winterthur presents in several chapters the diverse and differentiated connections between film and photography, thus allowing a trenchant profile of the photographic trends of the 1960s."

From a previous BLOW-UP post:
Is there another film that seems to crystalise a moment in time as perfectly as Antonioni's BLOW-UP? Viewed today, it seems like a "greatest hits" compilation of London's swinging era: the buoyant Herbie Hancock soundtrack; (which I have loved in vinyl, CD and iPod), the Yardbirds gig, complete with a cameo from Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck; Jane Birkin's blink and you'll miss it full-frontal moment that ushered in more lenient censorship in cinema.

A new book and exhibition at Vienna's Albertina Gallery (April - August) seeks to delve deeper into the context of the 1966 film, which really gained momentum in 1967, with a mix of photographs from the film and those photographs taken by veteran photographer Don McCullin (now 79) which Antonioni wanted for 'the murder in the park' sequence - those grainy images which turn out to show a man with a gun. McCullin says the reason Antonioni came to London was that "he saw it as an uptight country that was suddenly breaking open like a paper bag".  There was an exhibition in London which I attended, maybe 5 or 6 years ago now, on the film also showing those McCullin photos, so the Vienna exhibition may be more or less similar.

Antonioni was fascinated by London's fashion photographers after a significant feature about them in The Sunday Times on David Bailey, Terence Donovan and Brian Duffy who were immortalised in Francis Wyndham's 1964 article. The film became a process of art imitation pop life. Bailey (whose "Box of Pin-Ups" was a big hit at the time) declined to appear in the project, Terence Stamp was lined up to play Thomas the photographer, but lost out after Antonioni saw the relatively unknown David Hemmings in a play at Hampstead Theatre. 

I did not know that the model dancing on the roof over the opening credits was American supermodel Donyale Luna (whom my Australian friend Garry knew). Verushka of course is the other super-model in that stunning scene with Hemmings, while Jill Kennington and Peggy Moffitt are among the models waiting to be captured on film, and Janet Street-Porter is the girl dancing in the club!. We love that studio (John Cowan's) too, which was once an abbatoir. Landscapes and interiors are so mesmerising here, as is usual with Antonioni films, and not only that green park but the streets and city landscrape our hero drives around in, talking on his two way radio ! 

There have been several books on the meaning of BLOW-UP over the years and I think I have seen most of them. That recent coffee-table tome is terrific, great photos and essays. I was 21 when I first saw BLOW-UP that great year 1967 - it and The Beatles' SGT PEPPER album defined our cultural landscape that year. The film also highlights the political and social ambiguities that resonated during that '60s boom. 

The Vienna gallery says: There is hardly another feature film that has shown the diverse areas of photography in such a differentiated fashion, and which attempts to fathom them in such a detailed and timeless manner.
The protagonist believes that he has "documented" a murder; however, the photos turn out to provide only ambivalent evidence, because even enlargements or blow-ups of these photos don't reveal the presumed corpse. This cinematic study of the representation of images and their ambivalence demonstrates that Blow-Up has retained its cultural relevance since its creation in 1966.

I saw Sarah Miles at that THE SERVANT screening last year (Miles label), it would have been interesting to have been able to talk to her about BLOW-UP but we already know it was not a happy shoot for her ... 

The film still looks marvellous now, London looks fresh and clean, but is it a British, Italian or American film?, seeing as it was created and produced by Italians, shot in England, for MGM ... whatever, it remains an essential '60s classic.
One hilarious BLOW-UP artefact for me is Professor Peter Brunette's commentary on the DVD which is very po-faced as it states the obvious and tells us what we are about to see, and comes across like he is trying to explain the film's milieu to a classroom of American teenagers who know nothing about the Sixties or who these people like Vanessa Redgrave are. Maybe that's what teaching teenagers is like .... ?

See BLOW-UP label for more on the film, ditto Antonioni, Hemmings, Redgrave, Miles labels