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Cannes gets a peak at depraved London
By Louise Jury, Evening Standard Last updated at 10:08am on 14.05.09
A salacious snapshot of London life in the Sixties is being revealed to international film lovers this week.
Vintage films long lost in the archives have been recovered by the British Film Institute, which is launching them at Cannes under Flipside, a new strand of “weird and wonderful”British movies.
They reveal the seedy bars, strip joints and clubs for “beatnik art lovers” in Soho. But following the trend for Italian “Mondo” movies — “shockumentaries”, which show crazed, perverse and bizarre behaviour from around the world — the footage also captures flabby men in saunas, corn removals and wife-swapping parties across the capital.
Sam Dunn, BFI's head of video publishing, said: “It probably does seem quite surprising that the BFI is behind these releases. What these films aren't are Kurosawa or Alan Resnais or within the film canon, but they are things that speak about the history of Britain. They are a unique record and the BFI is rescuing them from obscurity.”
The first film, London In The Raw, was made by Arnold L Miller in 1964 and is described as peeping voyeuristically, and sometimes cynically, behind the curtains of London life.
Miller made a second film, Primitive London, a year later, which was billed as showing the capital's depravity. Mr Dunn said the films looked “quite quaint” today.
The third is The Bed Sitting Room by Richard Lester, based on a play co-written by Spike Milligan. The cast included Milligan, Harry Secombe, Peter Cook, Ralph Richardson, Roy Kinnear
and Dudley Moore.
Reader views (1)
It should be said that the 1963 strip-a-mentary " West End Jungle " , a companion piece to both" London In The Raw" and " Primitive London " was shown on BBC 4 , just a few weeks ago to very little fanfare.
Sadly, after waiting decades to see this celluloid slice of sixties Soho life, I found it deadly dull ! However, it's good to know these lost films are seeing the light of day again.
But....corn removals !!??
- Jargonaut, South London
