Peter Viney's Blog

I’ll Never Forget What’s ‘Is Name
1967
DVD release 2016, reviewed 2018

Directed by Michael Winner
Written by Peter Draper
Music by Francis Lai

Original US poster

Be very wary of nostalgia DVDs. The films you loved many years ago can look creaky and silly half a century on. I’ve been burned so many times, sitting uncomfortably watching something dreadful (Bedazzled springs immediately to mind) trying to excuse the time wasted by saying ‘Well, it’s a nice picture of Swinging London fashions with some great 60s cars …’ In general, old films from the 30s to early 60s hold up better than late 60s / early 70s.

On the other hand, my all-time favourite film is from 1968, Lindsay Andersons If …. So much so, that I know Anderson insists that there must be four dots after the title, not three.

current UK DVD

For over twenty years I’ve been seeking a copy of I’ll Never Forget What’s ‘Is Name. Maybe longer … I recall searching for a VHS video. I always asked at the video import shop in Covent Garden too, and at the British Film Institute shop, and had a couple of discussion about it there. Apparently, Michael Winner declined to allow its UK release for years. There have been various DVD releases in different countries, but now it’s fully available. It has been since 2016, but I missed it until I saw it in Foyles.

Michael Winner is known for the Death Wish series. Back in the 60s, he directed Billy Fury in Play It Cool and made his name with The System, which like l’ll Never Forget What’s ‘Is Name, was written by Peter Draper and starred Oliver Reed. In 1969 Winner made Hannibal Brooks with Reed (another film I recall fondly) and was soon off to Hollywood, directing Burt Lancaster in The Lawman and Marlon Brando in The Nightcomers before embarking on the Death Wish series.

Mostly we remember Winner now as a larger than life figure. For years until his death in 2012 he was Sunday Times restaurant critic, boasting of his houses and cars, flying 70 miles to hotels by helicopter. A.A. Gill said you always ordered a different meal to Winner, because he was so overbearing that you didn’t want to get Winner’s plate with the possible “additions” of bodily fluids by angry waiting and kitchen staff. He often insisted on being moved to a “better table” obsessively, demanding other patrons be shifted to accommodate him. He was fun to read though. He visited the 5 star Chewton Glen Hotel in the New Forest, had the nouvelle cuisine lunch in the Michelin-starred restaurant, and was so hungry afterwards that he went to the fish and chip shop in Highcliffe for a second lunch. He gave the fish and chip shop full marks, and the Chewton Glen nothing. The shop still has the review framed in the window.

Carol White as Georgina

I’ll Never Forget What’s ‘Is Name sparked a storm in early summer 1967. It was the first British film with the word fuck in it.  Marianne Faithful as Josie got the honour: Get out of here, you fucking bastard! Then it got banned in the USA for the scene where Oliver Reed and Carol White make love and Reed’s head disappears out of shot while her upper half writhes in pleasure. It ran against a total ban on oral sex, while Winner claimed at the time it was ‘masturbation’ as that was not specifically listed as banned. The result was the USA moving from blanket bans to a ratings system. It was then X in Britain. Times have changed, the DVD is a 15, not even an 18.

I saw it at least twice in the cinema. I think I saw it on black and white TV in the early 70s too. Never since. I remember some bits very well – as I drive past the houseboats on the Thames in Chelsea, I always think, ‘That’s where it was filmed.’ I still recall Harvey Hall’s face as the ultimate public school bully boy, Maccabee. I remember the several scenes round lakes and pools.

Harvey Hall as school bully Maccabee

So how does it stand up fifty years on? Amazingly well

Reed plays Andrew Quint, a disillusioned advertising whizz kid director. I suspect the name Quint was supposed to stand in for the C-word, as well as Mary Quant, symbolizing the era. At the start he throws in his job by smashing up his office with an axe. His boss, Jonathan Lute (Orson Welles) wants to keep him on board, so as to win an award, but Quint is off to return to his intellectually upright post-Cambridge job, at a small literary magazine, Gadfly. Quint has a wife he’s divorcing (Wendy Craig) and two mistresses and the odd bit on the side.

The secretary at the magazine is Georgina (Carol White) and they fall in love, or she falls in love with him. She is sweet, and it turns out, inexperienced. The big scenes are a visit to his loathed public school where the reunion turns violent, and a trip to Cambridge (Winner went to a hated public school, and to Cambridge University). The school reunion brings back all the cruelty and bullying, as the old boys led by Maccabee hunt down poor Enright, a smaller chap to beat up and throw in the lake.

Carol White asGeorgina; Oliver Reed as Quint, in Cambridge for the day

Lute is not going to let Quint go and so buys up the magazine. There is tragedy. Quint makes a wildly absurd and horrific “anti-advert” for a Super 8 camera and wins the award. Of course, at the end Lute announces he bribed the jury, and that he wanted something so bizarre they’d vote for it The award gets tossed in the Thames.

Orson Welles as Jonathan Lute

In a film full of great one liners, Orson Welles gets the lion’s share. I particularly liked his It’s one of 32 known Vermeers … 80 of which are in America and after Quint tells Lute where to put his award: Andrew dear, don’t bite the hand that might touch your throat.

Winner pulled in a remarkable series of star cameos. The DVD case lists five “stars” of the film while managing NOT to list Carol White, the clear leading female role, nor Harvey Hall, the most memorable role as Maccabee, nor Norman Rodway who plays Quint’s old university friend and magazine owner, Nicholas.

The current DVD  lists  Oliver Reed, Orson Welles, and Wendy Craig (correct) but then lists Marianne Faithful and Frank Finlay who each get around one minute of screen time.  Marianne Faithful is a girlfriend, Josie. Finlay puts in a wonderful cameo as the creepy, creeping hands chaplain at the public school in flashback. This is years before clerics and a penchant for fumbling became public knowledge.

Frank Finlay as The Chaplain

The original film poster lists: Orson Welles / Oliver Reed / Carol White / Harry Andrews. Much better, though Andrews is a minor single scene character.

Marianne Faithful as Josie

For the cameos, Winner must have had great connections.  Marianne Faithful was an iconic pop star. Frank Finlay was fresh from playing Iago against Olivier’s Othello.

Add Edward Fox playing Walter, whose house Quint is staying in.

Then Harry Andrews as Gerald. Gerald is a magazine contributor who Quint goes to see in his Cambridge college, and is a sleazy old bastard. He has a collection of obscene ‘What The Butler saw’ machines and can’t keep his hands off Carol White.

Michael Hordern as the headmaster

Michael Hordern plays the headmaster,. 1967 is the same year as  he played the senior officer in Richard Lester’s How I Won The War (Michael Crawford, John Lennon, Roy Kinnear). I’ll Never Forget What’s ‘Is Name was released three months earlier, which should reflect filming time. Both films share a move into the absurd with If ….. Hordern has some memorable lines, always forgetting boys’ names (hence the film title). A perfect Hordern moment is when he addresses the old boys and thanks them on behalf of ‘myself and my wife… (looks round behind him) … late wife …’

Lynn Ashley as Susannah, Oliver Reed as Andrew Quint

Lynn Ashley is the snootier mistress and is a model and actress, while Ann Lynn is Carla, Nicholas’s wife. Obviously she had an affair with Quint when they were both at Cambridge and they dislike each other.

Wendy Craig, so down to earth in later roles, is the wife here, still sleeping with Quint while seeking a divorce.

The film fits in stylistically with If…. And How I Won The War and precedes both of them. Yet Lindsay Anderson and Richard Lester are widely acclaimed and Winner, well, isn’t. Unfairly so, it transpires. The flashback sequences to Quint’s boyhood at the school take place after he’s been beaten up by Maccabee and utilise the single colour /  technicolour / B&W /  edge of psychedelic  mixture (as does the weird film which Quint makes to win the award). That film within a film has moments Quint could have filmed and some he couldn’t (such as boyhood). The old railway station (where Quint and Susannah meet for trysts) and train are now painted all white. Winner cuts in horrific concentration camp footage, and being 1967, an atomic mushroom cloud.

We wondered about Reed, then 29 and looking slim, as a star, but he was soon to feature in Women in Love then The Devils. We’re well before his Three Musketeers / Flashman era. i.e. he was considered a heavyweight acting talent (rightly so). Carol White gives a most affecting performance, just as she did in Poor Cow and in Cathy Come Home just before this. In retrospect, if you are listing only five names, those credits should read:

Oliver Reed / Carol White / Orson Wells / Harvey Hall / Norman Rodway.

Original LP sleeve

It shows Swinging London very well- though I thought the orchestral soundtrack by Francis Lai was effective, but too conservative compared to films like Blow Up. Lai had written the ward-winnig soundtrack to A Man & A Woman the previous year. Everyone involved was major in 1967.

 SEXISM rears its head in big letters throughout. The women all seem to be permanently and conveniently in the mood for sex, even if they’re angry with Quint. Georgina as the secretary has to put up with auto-leering at all times. Carla, Nicholas’s wife, is his excuse for selling the magazine because (“like all women”) she wants “things all the time” that is washing machines and sports cars. Yet Nicholas’s head swivels off his neck as they cruise London in Quint’s sports car, seeing all those mini-skirts. Mind you, I remember the same feeling of mini-skirt awe in a friend’s older open top car going along Kings Road the same year. It wasn’t just ‘Coo! legs!’ but that they were so well-dressed, made-up, hairstyles the lot. An aside: having tried twice to get casual jobs in late 60s Swinging London, like minor clerical, shop assistant or van driving, all the similar jobs advertised for girls (in those days gender was always specified) were more highly-paid, a reverse of the usual employment sexism. That’s why they were better-dressed perhaps!

While Michael Winner might be the last person to hold up as a cheerleader for female equality, I don’t think for a moment the film, its writer and director, are unaware that they’re showing extremes of sexism. There’s a powerful moment when Quint takes Georgina to the old school reunion, and she is the only female in the room (he hadn’t realized). Then there’s the greasy Gerald (Harold Andrews) pressing up against her while pretending to show her his dirty film machines. The women are objectified, and they also show they know they are being objectified.

There is a message, that you can’t escape commercial crassness, and that the little literary magazine is no better … Quint finds that Nicholas has a paying sideline writing for top shelf nude magazines (it looks like Playboy or Mayfair).

It’s well worth watching.

Now the little pile of DVDS to watch is topped by The Magus. Will it work as well as this? And now I’m looking for Burton / Taylor in Boom, another I remember fondly.

THE 60s REVISITED REVIEWS …

A Taste of Honey (1961)
Sparrows Can’t Sing (1963)
Tom Jones (1963)
The Fast Lady (1963)
Cat Ballou (1965)
The Ipcress File (1965)
Darling (1965)
The Knack (1965)
Doctor Zhivago (1965)
Morgan – A Suitable Case For Treatment (1966)
Alfie (1966)
Harper (aka The Moving Target) 1966
The Chase (1966)
The Trap (1966)
Georgy Girl (1966)
Fahrenheit 451 (1966)
Modesty Blaise (1966)
The Family Way (1967)
Privilege (1967)
Blow-up (1967)
Accident (1967)
Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
I’ll Never Forget What’s ‘Is Name (1967)
How I Won The War (1967)
Far From The Madding Crowd (1967)
Poor Cow (1967)
Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush (1968)
The Magus (1968)
If …. (1968)
The Devil Rides Out (aka The Devil’s Bride) (1968)
Work Is A Four Letter Word (1968)
The Party (1968)
Petulia (1968)
Barbarella (1968)
The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)
Bullitt (1968)
Deadfall (1968)
The Swimmer (1968)
Theorem (Teorema) (1968)
The Magic Christian (1969)
The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer (1970)
Performance (1970)