Peter Viney's Blog

The Knack … and how to get it
1965

Directed by Richard Lester
Screenplay by Charles Wood
From the play by Ann Jellicoe
Cinematography by David Watkin

Music by John Barry

Rita Tushingham – Nancy
Ray Brooks – Tolen
Michael Crawford – Colin
Donal Donnely – Tom

The rest of the cast have small roles … the stage play just had the four.

Dandy Nicholl’s is Tom’s landlady.
Samantha Juste (from Top of The Pops) is one of the girls at the beginning
Wensley Pithey is the older teacher at Colin’s school.
Charles Dyer is the man by the photo booth.
Jane Birkin (who married John Barry) is the girl on Tolen’s motorbike early on.

Jacqueline Bisset & Charlotte Rampling all make uncredited appearances, as do Charles Wood and Richard Lester.

Release dates: UK & USA – June 1965

The 60s retrospective series

Richard Lester directed this between A Hard Day’s Night and Help!  It’s a transition between the two. It retains the cheery zaniness of the first without (quite) falling over into the forced over-the-top zaniness if the second. The Beatles attended the premiere.

Rita Tushingham as Nancy

Rita Tushingham had come from A Taste of Honey, then had been in the stage play of The Knack in 1962, which was directed by its writer, Ann Jellicoe. The rest of the cast were new to the story. Ray Brooks went on from The Knack to Cathy Come Home. Michael Crawford proved his ability to fall over and fall into and onto things and come up beaming which took him through five years as Frank Spencer in Some Mothers Do ‘Ave Em on TV (1973-1978), a character that was a boon to comic impersonators for decades after the TV show ended (ooh! Betty!)

For me, this was the third film based on a stage play seen in a row, after A Taste of Honey and Work Is A Four Letter Word. All three plays were set in a single room. So what do you do to make single set stage plays into films?

You shoehorn in some added ambience and visual interest. What worked so well for Rita Tushingham’s debut, A Taste of Honey, continues  with The Knack. Both were produced by Woodfall Films, noted for their attention to camera work and location filming. Tony Richardson painted memorable pictures of Salford in 1961, while in 1965, Richard Lester pointed a camera at London. A Taste of Honey was more successful, because the urban canal landscapes and Blackpool pleasure beaches had not been overdone. The streets of Swinging Sixties London were already clichéd.

Ray Brooks: It was a phenomenal time. In the Sixties there were films being made everywhere. You couldn’t turn a corner in London without a film being made. It seemed like that there were lots of opportunities.
The Catch, 1986

That’s exactly why it doesn’t resonate as well as A Taste of Honey. Too many films on the same streets.

I usually do the general comments, then the plot. I’ll reverse it and get through the plot first.

PLOT

Colin (Michael Crawford) is a schoolteacher with cardie, jacket and tie. Here he is, renting a house in Sixties London, mid sexual revolution, and Colin has no experience of women.

Colin teaches maths (Michael Crawford)

We see Colin teaching with a funny staff room section. He mentions throwing chalk at a pupil – it hits him in the eye. He gets advice from an older colleague (played by Walter Pithey).

In the staff room

Older teacher: Best place is tight and hard, between the eyes on the bone where it hurts. Skipping ricochet off the desk lid. Right up his nostril. The left one. No, I tell a lie. His right nostril. Half an inch of yellow chalk. Vanished from view. Very satisfying.

I wonder if that older teacher ever taught at Bournemouth School For Boys? He would have fitted in well with some who taught me.

None of this is from the play.

Tolen (Ray Brooks) and Colin (Michael Crawford)

Colin is envious of Tolen, a drummer (Ray Brooks).  He is the only drummer I’ve seen in a suit, apart from Charlie Watts. Tolen has women lining up for his attentions, because he has “the knack.”  That is the knack, or ability, to seduce. After unhelpful advice on food, Tolen suggests they can operate from the same flat and “share” women as he does with his equally successful friend, Rory McBride – who is never seen but often mentioned in hushed tones. Colin needs a larger bed, part of the secret of success. Rory McBride has a six foot wide bed.

We see Nancy (Rita Tushingham), a virginal girl from the north, just arrived in London, seeking the YWCA and getting directions from people.

Man by the photo booth (Charles Dyer)

One of her first acts is to get a set of passport-sized photos from a photo booth. While Nancy is waiting for her photos to come out, a woman goes in, closes the curtain, passes out clothes then underclothes to an older man waiting outside, and FLASH go the cameras. Nancy sees their strip of pictures and coldly hands it back to them. Welcome to Swinging London.

Nancy in Knightstbridge. Harrods was there back then.

Confusing Buckingham Palace with the YWCA wasn’t funny even then. She passes Harrods.

The salesman (William Dexter) and Nancy (Rita Tushingham)

She goes into a clothes shop, and realizes the salesman’s intimate patter is a repeated script and reveals all to the next customer.

Salesman: I must please you, and I think I can. Don’t fail me now, or I’ll never be able to trust myself with a woman again. Show me …

She is picking up on everyone trying to hit her on, and using sexual- sounding blandishments which are totally insincere. Preparation for Tolen.

She crosses a zebra crossing helped by a chap who leaps out of his car (a Wolsey 1500, a friend had one) to carry her case. His car is then pushed away by the car behind … none of this is from the play either.

Colin (Michael Crawford) admires a water-skier

As part of his education in the “knack” Tolen takes Colin to a lake where he water-skis with shapely ladies. Colin is taking notes and his eyeballs are falling out of their sockets. Tolen explains :

Tolen: Not individuals. Just types. Women. Free from responsibility. Establish control. Yes, and I’m no referring to touch.

Tom (Donal Donnely) arrives on the scene at “Shangri La”

They have a ROOM TO LET notice in the window, and Tolen is hoping super stud Rory McBride will take the room. The room is taken instead by Tom (Donal Donnely), an Irish painter who has been ejected from his previous residence by the landlady (a Dandy Nicholls two line cameo) for painting everything white, which he starts doing in his new room. Tom is not impressed by Tolen’s swaggering about.

Tolen: Are you a homosexual?
Tom:  No, but thanks for asking.

Colin, Tom and Tolen set off to find a brass bed from a scrapyard which Tolen knows. Colin and Tom run into Nancy, who assists in a LONG … VERY VERY LONG … visual sequence through the streets and on the canals of London.

Pushing the bed

Nancy comes to the house. Tolen shows off with a whip, then plays a lion noise game and persuades Colin to look foolish by putting a carrier bag on his head.

Colin and the carrier bag.

Hang on! That’s actually a bit from the stage play! And indoors. It stands out.

This is where Tolen tries his seduction lines, and tells her he won’t “rape” her without consent.

Tolen: No one’s going to rape you. Girls don’t get raped unless they want to.

It doesn’t work, so he tells Colin to try.

Then Tolen and Nancy go off on his motor bike, pursued by Colin and Tom intent on protecting her. There are many japes, Colin gets stuck in tar etc. There’s a French farce scene when they find a row of doors creating a temporary fence and pop in and out of them. One reveals a family having tea. Colin nearly impales his private parts on a railing … this really was a foretaste of Frank Spencer!

Tom in the opening and closing doors scene.

They end up in a park, where Nancy faints. She revives, sees the three men standing over her, and screams “Rape!”

Rape!

Tolen, Colin and Tom react to the accusation

She slashes Tolen’s tyres and runs along the street. She knocks on a door and screams “Rape!” An older woman says, ‘Not today, thank you,’ and shuts the door.

She races back to the house, strips naked and throws Tolen’s precious Thelonius Monk LPs out of the window, then plays his drums. The men believe she is in a hysterical rape fantasy and suggest Tolen fulfill it. Nancy emerges in a dressing gown.

We see girls lining up to see Rory McBride at the Albert Hall with even longer queues of “dolly birds” (sorry) waiting to see him than lined up for Tolen at the beginning, confounding Tolen who earlier said:

Tolen: Rory has a number of women. Perhaps not quite so many as I have, but several.

Uniform girls wait to see Rory McBride (grey skirts, white tops, pendants, for all)

Nancy walks off into the dusk with Colin. Tolen joins the critical oldies watching, and expresses disgust that they will be unmarried and living together.

MORE

As I put the images in, I realized that virtually nothing online relates to a scene from the original play. Charles Wood’s screenplay had added a great deal of dialogue too.

Richard Lester added his own ideas to the play, such as addressing the camera, funny subtitles and  the “Greek chorus” of the older generation, intercut with the action.  Some of these comments were allegedly captured by hidden cameras. (Really? What did they do about permissions? Though while filming in the streets we had waiver documents for people in the near background).

Ray Brooks:  (Richard Lester) was extraordinary to work with. He’d just done ‘A Hard Day’s Night’, so The Beatles were always around. He’s a very visual man. They reckon that you could take any frame from ‘Help’, ‘The Knack’ and ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ and you could put it on the cover of Time/Life. Everything was so beautifully shot – he’s got a great visual sense. I don’t think that he’s a good actor’s director, he’s not very good helping you play a part for instance.
Interviewed by Chris Hunt, The Catch, 1986

A typical remark from the oldies chorus is National Service made a man out of me. Taught me the value of the belly laugh. Another is, There’s not a bus route in London, free of its share of youth, vice. 

My favourite is an old chap who, after a mildly smutty sequence, says I come from Hampton Wick. I’m used to innuendo. (Hampton Wick, where we sometimes stay for theatre in Kingston-on-Thames is Cockney rhyming slang. A hampton is a penis. Hampton Wick – prick or dick).

The costume design was important to the look. The booklet to the BFI blu-ray pointed out that throughout, Colin, the nerd, is dressed in grey. Tolen, the  womanizer, is in black, and Tom, the Irish painter with all the smart retorts is in white.

While Colin and Tom are chasing Tolen & Nancy on the bike, they pass what appears to be a fashion shoot.

Lester excelled in the fantasy sequences. At the start, our hapless hero, Colin imagines the long line of girls going up to Tolen’s bedroom, and they are identically dressed, with a uniform of Mary Quant skinny rib sweaters and classic Vidal Sassoon haircuts with flick ups.

Then we have the scene where we see Colin teaching young lads.  They are chanting theorems, and later in the film at moments of stress, we will hear that class of boys chanting apposite lines again.

Colin: The angle of incidence is equal to the angle of reflection.
Class chanting: The angle of incidence is equal to the angle of reflection.

Outside the classroom window buxom girls in short gymslips are playing netball … this may have been a Woodfall Films obsession, see A Taste of Honey. However, it’s four years later, so they were more aware that this is dodgy territory, and while looking at the girls, Colin realizes that a row of “dirty old men” in dirty macs are standing watching the game through the wire fence. He does a double take and sees himself standing among them.

Back in the staff room, he gym teacher complains about Colin ogling the girls playing netball.

Colin: That’s provocative behaviour!

The scene of taking the double bed frame through the streets must have taken much of the time, and much of the budget. It includes using it as a raft, adding it to a car transporter, pushing it up the steps of the Royal Albert Hall.

The Bed and Parking meters. Even two years late (Lovely Rita, Meter Maid), parking meters were a sign of modern London, unseen elsewhere.

Now they know how many beds it takes to fill the Albert Hall?

The rape allegation is the major problem issue for modern audiences. Rita Tushingham said in a recent interview that looking back,  it was not a subject for comedy, and she’s right for both genders. Nancy’s fantasy accusation undermines the validity of rape victims. Also the three accused guys are on the spot too. I’ve never thought myself PC, but it is definitely ringing all the wrong bells nowadays.

OVERALL

British Film Institute blu-ray. Informative booklet with essays. Lots of extras.

We watched it twice on blu-ray. The first time we had a long interruption phone call, and were very tired and were so negative that we decided to give it a better chance the next night based on past positive reactions. It was way better the second time.

Over half of it is new visual material by Richard Lester, and the joins between the visual bits and the verbal interchanges from the original play come in hard lines. The stage play has a peculiar quality to the dialogue. There’s a deliberate stilted rhythm to the interchanges. It’s never naturalistic to me. This isn’t a criticism, it’s one of the qualities that make the play interesting to listen to, and Lester preserves that feel. That allows the visual sequences to slip into fantasy – an egg that’s opened then reverses to become an egg again. Colin suddenly appearing high up in an alley, feet on both walls, the bed as a raft.

COMMENTS

An excuse for an anarchic series of visual gags, a kaleidoscope of swinging London, in which anything goes. Brilliantly done in the style of A Hard Day’s Night.
Helliwell’s Film Guide.

Karen: When you look back at the sixties films some are cool, and some aren’t. A Taste of Honey was cool. The Knack wasn’t.

The 1965 sex comedy is rather painful to watch now. Michael Crawford plays Colin, a sexually frustrated teacher who meets innocent but feisty northern girl Nancy, played by Tushingham. She helps him and his womanising drummer friend Tolen bring a huge new bed to their flat. There, Tolen makes advances on Nancy and tells her: “No one’s going to rape you – girls don’t get raped unless they want it.” Worse is to come. Later, Nancy faints and when she comes round falsely claims she was raped – and slashes the tyres of Tolen’s motorbike. She runs back to the flat and strips naked. Then she emerges in a robe, giving the impression it’s Colin she really fancies. She won a Bafta and a Golden Globe, while the film took the Palme d’Or at Cannes. But the levity with which the film treats rape, not to mention Nancy’s weird hysteria, is bound to make modern audiences a little queasy.
Stuart Jeffries, TheGuardian 28 Jan 2020

ADDENDUM:
In the 1970s, when we performed a costumed and rehearsed reading of a “real play” once a month, between our comedy sketch shows for ELT students, we did The Knack two or three times. It always went down well. We went through many rolls of wallpaper which we hung up for Tom to paint on. We moved the “feel” to early 70s rather than mid-60s cool.

For the vulgarly curious, Peter as Tom (I remember painting a lot), Karen as Nancy, September 1971. Behind our colleague Peter as Tolen. Bending down is Nick as Colin.

SOUNDTRACK

The star of the show is Alen Haven on organ.

Amazon: Composer John Barry matches the subject with a perky to pensive score that juxtaposes Alan Haven’s sometimes bubbly, sometimes funereal pop organ with strings, xylophone, and a blanket of female voices. The result is an often haunting backdrop that strangely conforms more to waltz rhythms than the expected discotheque beat. As usual with many Barry scores, there are variations on one melody (often in a minor mode). Here the tracks provide an eerie musical picture to Lester’s foray into the alienated and sometimes twisted psychology of ’60s youth. Included are snippets of incidental film dialogue and a vocal version of the theme song by Barry’s singing protégé Johnny De Little.