Peter Viney's Blog

The Party’s Over
1963-65

Directed by Guy Hamilton
Screenplay by Marc Behm
Director of photography Larry Pizer
Music composed and conducted by John Barry

CAST
Oliver Reed – Moise
Ann Lynn – Libby
Clifford David – Carson
Louise Sorel – Melina
Catherine Woodville- Nina
Mike Pratt – Geronimo
Maurice Browning – Tutzi
Jonathan Burn – Philip
Annette Robinson – Fran
Midred Mayne- Countess
Alison Seerbohm – Ada
Roddy Maude-Roxby – Hector
Eddie Albert- Ben
Barbara Lott- The Almoner

Filmed in autumn 1962 for release in 1963.
Actual release date April 1965 (UK), March 1966 (USA)

The Party’s Over was shelved by Rank in 1963 after it failed to pass the British Film Censors Board, and sat gathering dust until 1965, when an edited version scraped out, without any director or producer credits, which those involved had insisted were removed from the edited version. The film had lost a full eighteen minutes. It was still an X certificate. It crept out as quietly as wet flatulence in 1965, under the banner of a minor distributor, Monarch Films, and then only to the seedier sort of picture house as a “blue” picture. Rank had sold it on. Most towns had that kind of cinema. Ours was called The Continental Cinema, and was frequented by the dirty mac brigade. ‘Continental’ in those days indicated soft porn. They would have been disappointed by The Party’s Over because very little flesh is on display, no one effs and blinds. That’s not why it was banned.

Guy Hamilton, director The censors said we could release it in the last act they all got run over by a bus but I couldn’t see the point. They were young people struggling to find something and killing them off was no answer to anything.
Films and Filming, July 1973, quoted in the Bluray booklet

The BFI sourced a censorship report from 1962 based on the script:

The “beat” way of life is very sinister and it is no good pretending otherwise if we are going to allow it to be shown at all.

That sounds very like the US Hays Office policy of the 1940s which insisted that “bad” characters should get their comeuppance. Hamilton was willing to go to war with the censors, and also his consortium owned the copyright. He refused to change it, objecting especially to their demands on dialogue.

The 1965 poster above shows his grounds for anger. A girl in her underwear in a cracked champagne glass? Hardly beatnik. A new thriller from the director of Goldfinger? No wonder Hamilton disowned it.

It’s easy to see why it could be released two years later than intended in 1965. Guy Hamilton was now the Goldfinger director with a Midas touch on other films too. Screenwriter Marc Behm had been employed to write Help! It has a John Barry soundtrack.

Oliver Reed must have had high hopes for the film. He’d done five years as “Uncredited” on a number of films. These roles included ‘Bouncer’, ‘Man with bucket on his head,’ ‘Plaid shirt,’ ‘Artist in cafe,’ ‘teddy boy.’ Then Hammer horror films, The Curse of The Werewolf and The Pirates of Blood River. This was his first serious lead role. The releases now all say ‘Starring Oliver Reed and Anne Lynn’ which is a touch of wisdom after the event. The original credits place Clifford David at the top.

The current bluray / DVD is in the British Film Institute Flipside series of lost classics (well, ignored but much discussed films). It restores the film to its pre-censorship version. So while even after censorship it was an X certificate (i.e. 18) the present original and unedited version is a 12.

It fits in at the start of the swingin’ sixties London genre, and has as iconic a location area as you can get: Kings Road, Chelsea, Chelsea Embankment, the Albert Bridge. The building where most of them live in the film is an 18th century landmark, The Pheasantry. The elaborate statues were added in 1881. Eric Clapton once lived there, as did Germaine Greer. The basement drinking club existed until 1966 and was popular with Humphrey Bogart, Dylan Thomas, Augustus John, Francis Bacon and Anthony Hopkins. I used to walk past and think, ‘Phew! So Eric Clapton used to live in a stately home right on Kings Road!’ As the film reveals, not quite. The interior was a warren of studio flats linked by bare brick corridors. They may have used the jazz club downstairs for the club in the film. The building now houses a Pizza Express restaurant. They have a penchant for opening up in classic beautiful buildings.

The film script originally set the story in Paris and was titled The Left Bank. It was moved to London for reasons of economy … writer Marc Behm was an American living in Paris. A company was formed including Peter O’Toole and Jack Hawkins to make Behm’s story as a low budget, no-star film. Guy Hamilton decided to use real locations. As the Bluray booklet points out new technology dispensed with massive generators for camera and lights. Film stock was faster, and battery powered lights allowed using real locations instead of studio sets. (By battery, think more car battery than a couple of AAs).

Guy Hamilton Thanks to doing it this way, I’ve been able to put all the money on the screen.

The French origin shows in Oliver Reed’s screen name … Moise (Mo-eece), which they should have changed.

The problems in holding it back to 1965 for release are manifest. Beatniks? All very 50s and CND. John Barry’s modern jazz soundtrack dates it … as I’ve said before, 60s film directors were older than their audiences and believed 50s jazz to be cooler than their mid-1960s audiences ever would. By 1965, if these characters were cool, the soundtrack should definitely have been rock. Also, the film centres around Reed’s role as an alpha male with sheep-like acolytes (as pointed at beginning and end of the film … the last line is a dismissive “Baah…”). He’s a touch Charles Manson and has screwed all but one of them. Anyway, the events in the film happen because they’re all completely out of it. In 1962, this meant bottles of whisky and filter tip Senior Service cigarettes. The events are definitely druggy. Moise sports a very long kind of cheroot – I think it’s a cheroot not a joint. In 1965, audiences, though still innocent themselves would have known that alcohol is less likely to cause hallucinated fantasy re-enactments. I suppose they may have thought the cheroot was some sort of dodgy smoking material.

So what was the controversy?

In Films and Filming in December 1962, Peter Cowie gave a location report titled ‘The Amoral Ones’ as Introverts, Extroverts and Perverts.’

Goldfinger had Bond, a gadget laden Aston-Martin and Pussy Galore; Funeral in Berlin had Michael Caine, authentic Cold War locations and a cracking Len Deighton source novel. The Party’s Over had necrophilia.
Kings Road – The Rise and Fall of The Hippest Street In The World, by Max Décharné, 2005

An American girl joins a group of Chelsea beatniks and dies in a fall from a balcony; her father investigates. Tasteless and boring swinging London trash which became notorious when its producers (Rank) disowned it because it features a party at which a man makes love to a dead girl. An unattractive display of moral squalor.
Leslie Helliwell, Helliwell’s Film Guide, 1980s editions

The British Board of Film Censors may have been liberalized under John Treveleyan but a film with a plot concerning a young American businessman searching through London for his fiancé only to learn that she was accidentally killed at a party held by one of the beatnik gang ‘The pack” and then sexually assaulted by one of the guests who then commits suicide, would still have been a difficult proposition.
Andrew Roberts, booklet for the BFI Bluray release

So why it now worthy of remembering?

It’s early Oliver Reed and he has a powerful but controlled screen presence. Both American men are strong actors. Clifford Davis originally had that first billing. Eddie Albert, who plays the lost girl’s dad was in the UK to do a stage play and was persuaded to do the part. Optimistically, making three of the characters American was a vain attempt to get American box office.

More though is technique. There are two long flashback sequences describing what happened at the party.

When Carson first arrived, in search of his fiancé Melina, everyone sends him on a wild goose chase in different directions. Nina had been assigned the first lie, which was to pretend that Melina was dead. She wasn’t then, but it turned out to be prescient, though not in the story she later tells him. The first flashback is Nina’s version of the events which is a lie. The second flashback is Moise’s version which is the truth. This was considered weird ways of storytelling in 1962, and the film might have been praised then. Three years later, none of it seemed so innovative.

The plot

A startling open sequence has what looks like blood spurting over a shapely leg, but it turns out to be paint at the beatnik party. (That was one of the cuts by the censors).

The beatniks trail across Albert Bridge the morning after. Moise has intentions to seduce Melina (Louise Sorel), a wealthy American girl. His current squeeze is Libby (Anne Lynn), though he has also had an affair with Nina (Katherine Woodville) and later is found by Libby in bed with Ada (Alison Seebohm). Melina is unobtainable.

Melina is trying to avoid her fiancé, Carson (Clifford Davis). She gets a phone call. He’s coming to London to take her back home. He’s a young businessman, who works for her father, Ben (Eddie Albert). Carson arrives and heads for The Pheasantry where he meets Hector, who is some kind of concierge (that would have been more likely in the original French version). Carson has heavily Brylcreemed hair cut in a DA. His haircut would have looked American pop star in 1962. It looks weird by the time the film was released.

The pack of beatniks has united to keep him away from her. Nina tells him she’s dead. Then he’s directed to Geronimo’s art studio. Geronimo is a pro-Cuban scupltor in a filthy cardigan with bad teeth and a tendency to play drums badly. He tries to sell his art piece as ‘Spirit of Fidel Castro’ a line which would also have worked better in 1962 than 1965. Finally, Carson is told to take a cab to Buck House, which turns out to be Buckingham Palace.

Carson takes a studio in the Pheasantry, and gets to know Nina, who invites him into her apartment clad in her exotic Chinese pyjamas. He eventually getsto mingle with the beatniks without finding Melina.

Reed dominates every scene he is in with a brooding presence. Geronimo manages to sell his sculpture for £100 and throws a party. Carson is not invited. Moise is with Tutzi, a kind of sidekick with a shaven head. He was tortured by the Nazis in the war and has a crippled hand. Tutzi is the constant observer. They talk to the drunken Philip who has been pursuing Melina, he mutters that he “kissed her.”

Melina disappears. Something must be up – this accelerates the film considerably as we were getting fed up of people drifting about with advanced RP accents playing rich drop-outs. Not a pleasant looking bunch either:

Carson notices that Nina is wearing Melina’s bracelet, one he had given her. Later Ada has Melina’s headband.

The next morning a distraught Philip rushes up to the roof. Carson is in pursuit but Philip has barred the door to the roof. He stands on the parapet and plunges to his death in the street below, where Moise and the rest are standing.

Then Nina recounts the story in flashback. Melina had passed out at the party and everyone had decided to take her dress, bracelet, headband, stockings.

Philip had kissed her, while she was passed out. They decide to hold a joke funeral, using the van / flower stall one of them owns. They all hum the Funeral March (which incensed the censors particularly). Melina is on a bier on top. In this flashback she moves her head to one side and smiles. They find some waste ground and decide to leave her there.

Melina’s dad arrives to look for her and confronts Carson (his employee). Carson says he couldn’t find her. It doesn’t take Dad long. He finds her body at the morgue, unidentified victim of a hit and run apparently. Carson identifies the body. Nina, who he is now sleeping with, is waiting for him.

Meanwhile Libby goes to find Moise on his houseboat … the number of British films which involve scenes on houseboats on Chelsea Embankment are legion. There are very few of them. I doubt there ever were that many.

Libby is different than the rest … she has a real job as a cabaret singer. Moise is in bed with Ada.

Carson confronts Moise and gets the true story. The flashback is repeated, but this time Melina doesn’t pass out on the dance floor. She is retreating from Moise, Tutzi and Philip and falls off the balcony to her death. Everybody joins in stripping her, this time removing her bra as well.

Moise and Tutzi are the only ones who realize she is dead and observe the scene from the balcony.

Philip was too far gone to realize and is excited and gets on top of her and starts kissing her. This is intended as necrophilia, but we see nothing below the neck, and Philip does not know she is dead. The same mock funeral occurs, but this time, Melina is motionless in the shot which she had moved in during Nina’s version. Moise and Tutzi agree to deal with it. They must have placed the body in the street.

We see the coffin loaded on a train at Waterloo. The pack are watching Ben and Carson. Moise is with Libby and decides to confront Ben (usual anti-capitalist stuff, I imagine), but when he gets there realizes Ben’s grief and simply gives condolences. Moise and Libby walk off together, turning to say “Baah …’ to his sheeplike watchers. He has presumably grown.

THE BLURAY / DVD

Interestingly, the cover photo on IMDB has it labelled 18. My copy above is labelled 12:

Contains moderate drug and sex references and the sight of suicide.

It is taken from the best pre-release print, though the BFI say it is still not exactly a Guy Hamilton approved version. It has restored the 18 minute cut. It is a fine crisp black and white transfer, but several scenes have a thin vertical black line which may have been scoring in a projector.They are too fine to worry about. It adds two shorts Emma and The Party as well as the censored version, which I suspect few will ever watch!

SOUNDTRACK

Time Waits For No Man – written by John Barry and Mike Pratt. Sung by Annie Ross.

Mike Pratt plays artist / drummer Geronimo in the film. His twin career as a songwriter eclipses his acting career. He wrote for Tommy Steele with Lionel Bart, and so wrote the lyrics to The Little White Bull, a song I have heard many dozens of times in the last few years as it has been the song all my grandkids have demanded as soon as they get in the car (I have a Kids Playlist in iTunes). I loved it as a kid too.

THE 60s REVISITED REVIEWS …

The Six Five Special (1958)
A Taste of Honey (1961)
The Young Ones (1962
Some People (1962)
Play It Cool (1962)
Summer Holiday (1963)
Sparrows Can’t Sing (1963)
The Small World of Sammy Lee (1963)
Tom Jones (1963)
The Fast Lady (1963)
What A Crazy World (1963)
Live It Up! (1963)
Just For You (1964)
The Chalk Garden (1964)
The Carpetbaggers (1964)
Wonderful Life (1964)
A Hard Day’s Night (1964)
The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1965)
Gonks Go Beat (1965)
The Party’s Over (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
The Ipcress File (1965)
Darling (1965)
The Knack (1965)
Catch Us If You Can (1965)
Help! (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)
Nevada Smith (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)
Girl On A Motorcycle (1968)
The Bofors Gun (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)
Medium Cool (1969)
The Magic Christian (1969)
The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer (1970)
Little Fauss and Big Halsy (1970)
Performance (1970)