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Maybe you have to be English to see how fake Ritchie is, and how his endless plastic-slick cartoon-like characters are as far removed from the grim, gritty realism that is kitchen sink at its core. Mike Leigh, yes. Loach yes. Ritchie, never. He wouldn't know a kitchen sink if it was thrown out of a window by Richard Harris and Alan Bates and landed on him. Lol
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Posted: |
Nov 29, 2024 - 3:27 PM
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By: |
Jim Phelps
(Member)
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I think my main attraction to these films is the “ugly beauty” in the places themselves, but I obviously also care about the characters and the story. Maybe 75% place, and 25% story, depending on director. So we’re a bit different there, as your reviews (mostly) center on plots, characters and actors.
First of all, thanks for slogging through this thread! I greatly appreciate you and the few others who have read and commented on the films.
I share the same interest in the Kitchen Sink aesthetic, but I simply don't know enough about specific Northern areas of England to comment on them as they appear in the film. I scale back my reviews to focus primarily on characters and actors because otherwise these posts would be three or four times longer!
I also realize that this topic is of little interest to the mainstream FSMer. Many of the films are 60-year-old black and white films with minimal underscore, and they're at odds with the preferred cinematic product most here like.
As for when this thread ends, I think I have about 8 or so films left that really fit the genre's bill, so to speak, and then after that there will be occasional revisits.
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Posted: |
Nov 30, 2024 - 1:59 AM
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By: |
MusicMad
(Member)
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The Comedy Man (1964)
Plot: Charles “Chick” Byrd, small-time actor and lifelong failure at life, takes one last chance at finding success in London....
Hey, Jim, I enjoyed reading your review (extensive!) of this film as it's one I've watched and enjoyed at least twice. Several scenes made an impression on my youth and I commented on this forum on 15 Aug 19, as follows (should you be interested to compare):
The Comedy Man (1964) ... 6/10
Almost a who's who of British film/TV talent at the time, with great performances from its main stars, Kenneth More and Billie Whitelaw, this is a sad tale of resting thespians in a miserable wintry London. "Does the roof leak?" ... "Only when it rains" - unoriginal but fitting for the setting.
Is is a great film (a question I often ask myself)? ... No, but it is engaging and you do feel involved with the characters, though at the end there is the question: so what? Perhaps if they had got themselves jobs instead of collecting the 67s 6d dole money (weekly?) they'd have made more of their lives.
I'd seen the film many years ago and found it surprisingly adult (lothario Kenneth More?) ... it's all so dated now but as a glimpse of London in the early 1960s it is surprisingly effective.
Dennis Price is wonderful as the sleazeball agent (today's news isn't new!), Frank Finlay looks nothing like the Casanova character he later became and it's amusing to watch Cecil Parker play a down-and-out hanger-on. The lovely Angela Douglas charms (too innocent to be true) and, happily, Edmund Purdom disappears for most of the film.
A weak musical score - often totally inappropriate - by Bill McGuffie (utilising a main theme by Clive Westlake) and others does detract at times but, to its credit, keeps the film from being too serious.
Worth watching.
I know you mentioned that stars KM and AD (previously together in Some People (1962)) were subsequently married ... my parents told me 50+ years ago that it was this relationship which had a detrimental effect on KM's career: in the 1950s he was one of Britain's top stars but his status declined (though this was likely to be mainly a sign of the changes brought about by the new rising stars of whom you have written) with much press coverage of his extra-marital affair et al.. A different era ... 
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Posted: |
Dec 7, 2024 - 1:10 PM
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By: |
Jim Phelps
(Member)
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Four in the Morning (1965)
Plot: The parallel stories of two couples in crises and their "connection" to a drowned woman found in a river.
Directed by Anthony Simmons
Written by Anthony Simmons (Story and Screenplay)
Cinematography by Larry Pizer
Music by John Barry
Cast: Ann Lynn (Girl); Judi Dench (Wife); Norman Rodway (Husband); Brian Phelan (Boy); Joe Melia (Friend).
Filmed in Putney, London.
The body that the Thames police find at the film’s opening doesn’t even have any photos taken of the position it is in when found at low tide. The coppers merely lift up the body, say a few words about how long the stiff corpse had been in the water, and then dump it in their boat.
The men in Four in the Morning are all obnoxious, selfish, and juvenile boors. The women mostly suffer silently. Norman Rodway and Joe Melia are particularly irritating though Rodway’s performance improves in his scenes with Dench. The two would reunite thirty years later for an episode of the Beeb Britcom As Time Goes By.
Ann Lynn and Brian Phelan play characters who meet, sleep together, and apparently fall in love…or at least she does, but he’s not interested. These characters serve no purpose though at least their scenes take place outdoors, so the viewer gets to enjoy the grimy black and white Thames and its surrounding areas.
The body really has nothing to do with the other characters, who are all named after the actors, or it’s the actors just calling one another by their real names because this is, after all, an “arty” film. Credit must go to the filmmaker for grimly chronicling the body’s arrival and subsequent detailed examination at the coroner’s office while the staff drone on about their drab daily lives. The unforgiving visuals and coldly clinical treatment of a dead body like it’s just a job and not a tragedy is pretty edgy for 1965.
John Barry’s theme plays endlessly with little variation. There’s one bit where the music approaches James Bond territory, but it quickly retreats into its baroque repetitiveness. On the plus side, Barry’s theme is reminiscent of the haunting “mood music” produced by the Jackie Gleason Orchestra. It’s a good theme, but it plays too often when silence would do. The film would have been better served with even less music and dialogue than it already had! An unintentionally amusing element of the dialogue is the amount of conversation involving whether or not characters want coffee!
In fact, one of the film’s strengths includes its sound design, which does well in recording the sounds of the Thames, the motors of boats, shoes walking on concrete, and sounds of the city in the distance. Visually, the film does well in capturing the dreary black and white London with the Thames practically a character in itself.
While Four in the Morning has Kitchen Sink elements, such as Dench and Rodway’s bickering over what they want in life, Dench’s endlessly crying baby, as she and the infant sit amid their cramped and dreary house with its peeling, greasy wallpaper, crap furniture, and lousy bric-a-brac decor. Dench doesn’t even speak during the first fifteen minutes of the film, nor does she ever leave her claustrophobic and unpleasant house. All in all, the film is mostly a pretentious bore. It’s more of a wannabe Nouvelle Vague or student art film.
My Rating: 4/10
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Scum is a distant cousin of kitchen sink drama, one that doesnt even get a christmas card every year. For sure it has gritty grimness and violence, and angry attitude of the lead, but it's more Sweeney than Poor Cow.
It's the film that spawned the phrase "I'm the Daddy now!"
By the way if kitchen sink dramas ever had a song to accompany it, I suspect it would be Squeeze's Up the Junction.
"...We moved in to a basement
With thoughts of our engagement
We stayed in by the telly
Although the room was smelly
We spent our time just kissing
The Railway Arms we're missing
But love had got us hooked up
And all our time it took up..."
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Posted: |
Dec 12, 2024 - 2:23 AM
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By: |
Jim Phelps
(Member)
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That Squeeze song bookends nicely with the previously posted elegiac Kinks song, "Where Are They Now?", which namechecks not only Arthur Seaton, Charlie Bubbles, Jimmy Porter, and Joe Lampton, but also Angry Young Men authors Stan Barstow, John Osbourne, Keith Wayerhouse, and Alan Silitoe. It's deep, man! Deep! 
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