Successfully marketed as a ‘Mod’ British New Wave sex comedy (see poster), a ‘60s Youth Culture film, like THE KNACK/’65 or GEORGY GIRL/’66, a must-watch to keep up at your next cocktail party, Karel Reisz’s film filters David Mercer’s politically facile script thru up-to-date Carnaby St. era stylistics. It makes a fascinating time-capsule, but a very lumpy trip. Star-making for David Warner & Vanessa Redgrave, commandingly glamorous as the uncoupling twosome. HER: rich old-money, just divorced from Morgan, getting set to marry her ex’s agent, Robert Stephens. HIM: artistically blocked painter, raised proletarian Communist and breaking apart with the stress of having a foot in both camps. In an odd choice that likely ‘made’ the film, Mercer expresses Warner’s metastasizing mania thru a gorilla fixation: real docu-footage (in the jungle/at the zoo); KING KONG and TARZAN film clips; and most memorably with a gorilla suit donned by both Redgrave and Warner. Often wildly inventive (even structurally, skipping a first act), it’s really quite a sad film, with a downward trajectory that audiences somehow didn’t take out of the theater. Our poster really is how people talked about this.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As mentioned, THE KNACK and (first choice) GEORGY GIRL with Vanessa’s sister Lynn, both Redgraves Oscar nom’d this year. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-knack-and-how-to-get-it-1965.html https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/10/georgy-girl-1966.html
CONTEST: Redgrave & Reisz reteamed on ISADORA/’68 which is prefigured here. Name the scene mirrored to win a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up of your (streamable) choice.
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