Privilege

Privilege
1967

privilege-1

Directed by Peter Watkins
Story by Johnny Speight
Script by Norman Bogner & Peter Watkins
Music by Mike Leander

CAST
Paul Jones – Steven Shorter, a pop star
Jean Shrimpton – Vanessa, a portrait painter
Mark London – Alvin Kirsch, PR executive
Max Bacon – Julie Jordan, record label boss
William Job – Andrew Butler, financial backer
Jeremy Child- Martin Crossley, manager
Malcolm Rogers – Reverend Jeremy Tate
James Cossins- Professor Tatum
Frederick Danner- Marcus Hooper
Victor Henry – Freddie K, record producer
Arthur Pentelow – Leo Stanley
Steve Kirby- Squit
Michael Barrington – The Bishop of Essex
Michael Graham – Timothy Arbutt
Doreen Mantle- Miss Crawford
The George Bean Group- The Runner Beans

The 60s Retrospective series continues …

It was filmed in August and September 1966, and released in the UK on 28 February 1967, so a few months ahead of the Summer of Love. The budget of £700,000 was comparatively low.

Back in 1967 …

My first impression back in 1967 was negative. In that I was in line with the majority of critics. I found the satire too obvious and sledgehammer. I didn’t like the music nor find it credible, and was disappointed – Pretty Flamingo by Manfred Mann featured in my very favourite songs of the year before. I started watching it again many years ago and gave up after half an hour. The film has since gained cult status, and is now in the full British Film Institute version on remastered blu-ray with booklet, and shorts by Peter Watkins. That’s the one I’m reviewing here … and this time I got it. It only took me 53 years.

Privilege blu ray

Privilege: BFI blu-ray release

Peter Watkins

Peter Watkins was flavour of the year in 1967, in which he won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for The War Game. It was a 45 minute TV programme for The Wednesday Play series, made in 1965, and withdrawn by the BBC before its October 1965 screening. It had a limited release at arts festivals in 1966. In 1967, it was shown right round the university film club circuit, which is where I first saw it. In Hull, it was shown just as the Six Day War started. It depicts a nuclear bomb attack on Britain, and the aftermath, done as a documentary. People are confined to their homes, food is in very short supply as the sickness spreads … hold on, I’m writing this locked down in March 2020. Let’s not dwell on it.

Privilege was Watkins’ first feature film. Johnny Speight was already a successful sitcom writer with Till Death Us Do Part from 1965. The big thing was the casting of the lead roles … Paul Jones as Steve Shorter, a mega star pop singer and Jean Shrimpton as Vanessa, a painter. Neither had been in a film before.

Watkins took the role of serious newsreel narrator from his earlier documentaries, and he did it himself. He is the voice. We realized that his tone and pace were later borrowed virtually intact for A Hitch-Hikers Guide To The Galaxy (radio and TV version).

Another technique we noticed was how many times the camera saw people from behind – especially Paul Jones and Jean Shrimpton.

According to Wikipedia, Peter Watkins based it heavily on a 1962 Canadian film, Lonely Boy which showed hysteria around a Paul Anka tour.

The pop star and the model and the composer and the drummer …

Beautiful people: Paul Jones as Steven Shorter, Jean Shrimpton as Vanessa

Watkins did not cast actors in the main roles.

Peter Watkins originally wanted Eric Burdon and Sarah Miles (who was of course an actor). Paul Jones said self-deprecatingly that he was second choice, because Jean Shrimpton (who presumably had been cast by then) was significantly taller than Eric Burdon, and Paul Jones is taller than her. Jean Shrimpton suggests Paul was chosen first, but I’d assume they were still considering:

(Peter) Watkins already had one untried actor in Paul Jones, and it was not surprising that he was uncertain about coping with two of us … (Terence) Stamp had no doubts at all that it was a bad (idea), He did not want me to dothe film. ‘You’re an amateur,’ he said flatly, ‘and I’m dead against amateurs being used when professionals are available. And anyway, you won’t be any good.’
Jean Shrimpton, An Autobiography, 1990

Paul Jones

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Privilege: Black & White promo still

Paul Jones is a man of many talents. Early in the days of Manfred Mann he fronted a late evening Southern TV programme on R&B, and he was a distinctive lead singer with one of the best 60s bands. This was his first acting role, though he later went on to star in musicals, from Threepenny Opera at The National Theatre, to Evita to Guys and Dolls, culminating in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Kiss Me Kate. He had his Radio Two blues programme and still fronts The Manfreds and The Blues Band. I’ve often seen him live (and he sounds much the same as in the 60s).

In July 1966 he launched a solo career. He had had enough of playing inaudibly to screaming audiences with Manfred Mann and realized he was about to have a nervous breakdown when a cardigan, knitted by his wife, was stolen from the dressing room in South Wales. He had to get the roadie to go on stage and announce he wouldn’t perform until it was returned. He was most unusual for a rock star in being aware that this was not normal behaviour.

He had a decent hit with High Time in 1966 (UK #4), then I’ve Been A Bad Bad Boy in January 1967 (UK #5) which was released ahead of the film as an advance teaser. When he left Manfred Mann, he remained signed to their label, HMV (EMI). The band got dropped. Old school music executives were lead singer focussed … Buddy Holly & The Crickets, Johnny Kidd & The Pirates, Gerry & The Pacemakers, Billy J. Kramer & The Dakotas. So they naturally assumed that the money was on the lead singer. They were wrong. After the two hits, Paul Jones’ pop star career stalled (rapidly replaced by his stage musical career). Manfred Mann found a new lead singer in Mike d’Abo, who could sing all the earlier stuff on stage, signed with Fontana (Philips group), and rolled on to have more hits than Paul Jones … another TEN Top Ten hits over a decade, first with Mike d’Abo, then as Manfred Mann Chapter Three. Nowadays, both Jones and d’Abo perform together in The Manfreds.

Making a feature film was not an odd move for a pop star. Elvis Presley is the most obvious template, or in Britain, Tommy Steele and Cliff Richard. Then there were the pop based films from Play it Cool to A Hard Day’s Night to Help! to Catch Us If You Can. Most bands were trying it. Non pop-exploitation? The same year John Lennon was in How I Won The War, Lulu was in To Sir With Love and Mick Jagger in Ned Kelly. Paul Jones was following the Elvis model … a related dramatic role, with the chance to do a couple of songs.

Jean Shrimpton

From the trailer to Privilege

The Face. The first Super Model. Totally gorgeous. She was at the end of her affair with Terence Stamp when she took the film role. She is a little wooden, and her County Set RP accent is stronger than it would be today. No, she’s not an actress, but I conclude that in the role it didn’t matter.

I have to allow that he (Terence Stamp) was right in his gloomy predictions about my acting abilities … The first day’s work was on location and I had not the faintest idea of what was going on around me. I was also to discover that mdelling is a bad preparation for acting. A good model is constantly aware of the camera; a good actor has to forget it is there. Also my voice was too small …
‘Speak up, dear,’ the sound man kept saying, and finally in desperation to the director, ‘I can’t hear her.’
Jean Shrimpton, An Autobiography, 1990

Terence Stamp was not kind. Jean Shrimpton complains that he spoke to “one of the cheaper Sunday newspapers.”

He went on to say that for me to announce I was playing a lead in a film was like him announcing that he was going to perform complicated brain surgery …’Crazy, man. I mean, that’s it,’ he said in the sixties’ mode of speech he affected, ‘For her to feel she can cope with a big part in a feature film must take a great deal of conceit or a genuine unawareness of the bloody pressures when you’re making a film … it’s like casting Mick Jagger to play Hamlet … a bloody stunt.’
Jean Shrimpton, An Autobiography, 1990

That was two weeks into filming. One imagines it hit her confidence. Also, I’m going to disagree with her on her small voice. We watched the last fifteen minutes twice and the softness of her delivery is mesmerising, pulls the listener in, and accentuates the role. It may have been born of lack of expertise, but Peter Watkins made it work.

Mark London

Mark London as Alvin Kirsch

Another major cast member who was not an actor. Mark London played the public relations guy, Alvin Kirsch. He also co-composed the opening song Free Me with Mike Leander. 1967 was a good year for him. He co-wrote To Sir With Love for Lulu, which was the biggest selling single of 1967 in the USA. He continued his main job as a soundtrack composer, producer and was a genuine manager, for Stone The Crows. This, and a single episode of The Avengers are his only IMDB acting credits. He is completely convincing in the role, and I guess he knew these people from his day job.

Max Bacon

Max Bacon as Aunt Julie: management, drums and vocals

Max Bacon plays the old style label executive, who wants Steve Shorter to sing sentimental songs about mother cooking dinner. He demonstrates singing his idea while playing drums. Max Bacon really was a drummer, who had been in the Ambrose dance band in the 1920s and 1930s, alternating on drums and Yiddish songs, a weird speciality for someone named Bacon. He moved on to become a character actor. In the film he’s called Julie Jordan or Aunt Julie. We can only speculate why, though Wikipedia has the enigmatic comment “He never married.” It’s a broad send up, and I’d guess that someone acquainted with the Ambrose dance band era, like Bacon, had models to base it on. In 2020, it’s uncomfortably stereotypical. Bacon played much the same role in Play It Cool in 1962 (reviewed on this blog).

The plot

A clapper board says 1971. So this dystopia is five years in the future from the filming date, late summer 1966.

A concert. Paul Jones is Steve Shorter. Steve Shorter’s dramatic act consists of singing Free Me from a prison cage while handcuffed and being pushed around by men dressed as guards.

Free Me – Steve Shorter (Paul Jones) with fan

This was predicative of acts like Alice Cooper and Iggy Pop a few years later. Though no one had gone this far, there were precedents. Screaming Jay Hawkins used to come on stage in a coffin and dress up in voodoo gear – I saw him. Screaming Jay was truly, truly dreadful. James Brown had the theatrical collapse in every show. However, Free Me was a step further. It has an all women audience in screaming fits.

The country is governed by a coalition (Labour and Conservative being much the same) and they are concerned to control, youth. Steven Shorter is set up for mass success to placate people and divert them from any thought of politics. They set up Steven Shorter franchises nationwide … night clubs, shops, brand names.

Keep them happy, off the streets and out of politics.

Shorter looks depressed (sulky was a word in a contemporary review) and passive, as he is monitored and manipulated. A memorable scene is Aunt Julie (Max Bacon) as the label boss demonstrating his idea for a song about mother’s cooking. He is demonstrating it to one of his record producers, Freddie K (Victor Henry). Freddie K is also a prescient creation, a cross between Elvis Costello and Malcolm McLaren ten years in the future. Even the name sounds like a rap artist!

Vanessa (Jean Shrimpton)

Vanessa (Jean Shrimpton) is hired to paint a portrait, and our lonely passive pop star is drawn to her (who wouldn’t be?) (We noticed that like Terence Stamp, she is left-handed – maybe that’s how they bonded!)

The film isn’t interested in making us think we’re in a future world … it’s only five years on. However, Steve Shorter’s watch which he displays to Vanessa is fifty odd years ahead … it plays stored music. A prototype Apple watch? Interesting as the next sequence is about apples.

Shorter is instructed to make a film persuading people to eat six apples a day because of a glut in the market, a high comedy sequence in which Shorter remains powerless, sad and uninvolved.

Arbutt (Director) Well, for example today the actors must all think apples, be apples and ultimately become apples.

The government needs even more control, and conspires with the churches to start a campaign with the slogan WE WILL CONFORM.

They decide that Shorter can be converted from the anti-authoritarian prisoner of Free Me (dressed in blue )into a Messianac symbol (dressed in scarlet).

Shorter listens, dead-eyed, cynical, manipulated

Now we’re going to use that appeal by changing it … we’re going to make him sat “I’m sorry for what I’ve done.”

He will need to perform at a rally and repent in public and perform religious songs. An advertising executive presents the new clean sartorial image to be shoved at the young:

The new image

The government plan is pitched by The Runner Beans (played by The George Bean Group) performing a rocked up Onward Christian Soldiers to an audience of senior bishops, conducted by Freddie K, our future punk.

Shorter begins to confide in Vanessa

We see Shorter beginning to withdraw even further into himself. At a picnic he orders hot chocolate with his lobster: everyone immediately follows suit.

Alvin Kirsch (Mark London) the PR man with Reverend Jeremy Tate (Malcolm Rogers)

The stadium rally will be addressed by Reverend Jeremy Tate (Malcolm Rogers) a Billy Graham style firebrand preacher.

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The rally is Nuremburg meets Ku Klux Klan with Reverend Tate having everyone chanting “We will conform.”

We will conform!

The Runner Beans perform Jerusalem in the style of The Byrds. The initial impact is shock, but the tune cannot be defeated by any treatment and by the end I liked the style of “We will build Jerusalem in the Jingle Jangle morning” (my words).

Rows of disabled people front the stage for a Lourdes reference … and that happened at Beatles concerts.

Shorter is disgusted with himself, gets it together with Vanessa. He shows her his back and wrists where the mock guards genuinely hurt him in his Free Me act.

The awards ceremony

At an awards ceremony, Shorter breaks out and expresses his disgust and tells them he is not any kind of deity.

His popularity disappears immediately. The financial backer pulls out. His music is banned. The narrator explains over archive footage (silent, no banned voice):

It is going to be a happy time in England, this year in the future

The end

Ironically, Paul Jones was an agnostic at the time of filming, but attended a rally (!) with Cliff Richard in the 1980s and became a Born Again Christian.

Contemporary comments

In Privilege, Paul Jones, erstwhile singer with the Manfred Mann Group, makes his acting debut. Maybe it’s the fault of writer, director or both but Jones plays the role of the bewildered, disillusioned singer on one note of unanimated distaste. Trouble with Privilege is that it cannot make up its mind whether it’s a crusading film for the intelligentsia or a snide, ‘with it’ comedy.
Variety 31 December 1966

This is a bitter, uncompromising movie, and although it isn’t quite successful, it is fascinating and important. Watkins made a mistake in bringing the newsreel techniques of “The War Game” into a narrative film, where a director should be able to make his point with his story, the performances and the photography. Still the movie isn’t a failure so much as an interesting episode in the career of a director who I think will eventually be ranked with Fellini and Bergman. Because it is a “director’s picture,” I’ve neglected to mention the acting. But if you care, Jones is quite adequate as the pop singer, and Jean Shrimpton is better than I expected.
Roger Ebert, 1 November 1967

SOUNDTRACK

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The Runner Beans ‘Jerusalem’ (The George Bean Group)

It was what you did in 1967. Cilla Black did it with Alfie and Paul Jones did it with I’ve Been A Bad Bad Boy. That is, release the single and hope for a hit before the film is released. It worked.

I've been a bad bad boy 2 copy

I’ve Been A Bad Bad Boy (I can’t resist the rear of an HMV sleeve rather than the front)

Privilege was issued as a soundtrack LP, and as a Paul Jones EP.

Privilege EP front copy

They didn’t even have enough for an EP, and Paul Jones was savvy enough to make sure the added fourth song was his own composition (25% of the EP royalty). He did it with the B-side of the single too (50% of the royalty).

Privilege EP rear