Nobody Knows What He Does

I don’t know exactly what it is about ‘Sebastian’, but I really, really like it. Ostensibly a somewhat frothy mix of Swinging London tropes and Cold War cliché, there’s an element of truth in its somewhat patchy narrative that I find irresistible. It also has really good music, mainly by the amazing American composer Jerry Goldsmith, with some electronics from Tristram Cary.

Dirk Bogarde stars as Sebastian, a supercilious academic who just happens to be the Government’s top code breaker, presiding over an all-female staff in some anonymous London skyscraper. These days I suppose he’d have Asperger’s or something but, in 1968, he’s simply portrayed as a spiky super genius with commitment issues, some odd bod habits and horrible wallpaper that he hasn’t even noticed.

Into his drab and monomaniacal life drops Susannah York, a dizzy dolly with a penchant for direct action and tiny dresses. When he realises she can make a dozen words out of ‘thorough’ without blinking, he immediately adds her to his pool of clever ladies (women are better are cracking codes, apparently), but his interest in her is always more than professional, which is not particularly surprising as she is absolutely adorable.  Things become complicated when an old flame is forced to sell him out to the Enemy, and things get really weird when the other side feed him LSD and try to get him to jump off a roof on the pretext that he can fly*.

It’s an all over the place sort of thing, half based on the true life exploits of Leo Marks (look him up – fascinating fellow), half seemingly made up on the spot. It struggles to decide what it's really about, and giddily (and endearingly) veers between genres and styles and changes tone from scene to scene. But everyone in it is good, and Bogarde and York make a lovely couple, however unlikely the pairing may initially seem. 

As you may recall, Bogarde grew to despise the ‘triviality’ of his early films so, after the mid-sixties, went all out to star in as many ‘masterpieces’ as possible, with often quite tedious results. ‘Sebastian’ is slap bang in the middle, a frivolous masterpiece, if you will**. I love it, not just because the marvellous Michael Powell had a hand in it, but also because, every time I watch it, frothy and a bit giddy or not, I just really ENJOY it.
  

* This is the only film in which Dirk Bogarde trips his tits off on acid although, in ‘The Mind Benders’, he does trip his tits off in a flotation tank.

** Bogarde described the film as a 'non event', one of many things he and I differ on.

Sebastian

The World Of The Nightmare

David Greene seemed like one of Britain’s most promising directors in 1969. After a decade in TV, Greene had made the transition to films with odd horror thriller 'The Shuttered Room' in 1967, rapidly following up with brilliant espionage romance 'Sebastian' and policier 'The Strange Affair' (see yesterday) in 1968. Although none of his films could be called masterpieces, he definitely had something, a way of taking standard, even clichéd, genre material and giving it a Carnaby Street paint job and a fresh and trendy cast of pretty semi-freaks: a sort of psychedelic-lite approach to film making.

‘I Start Counting’ (1969) was his last British film, and its critical and commercial failure drove him to America, where he stayed working in TV until his death in 2003. The film itself has a mixed reputation, is not available on DVD, and has not been shown on telly for many years, but is hardly the disaster Greene thought at the time.

Wynne (Jenny Agutter) is a 15 year old school girl with a desperate crush on her older foster brother George. Their family is pleasant, but slightly dysfunctional: fatherless, and crammed together in a small flat on a featureless new estate. In her spare time, Wynne goes back to their old, abandoned family home in a nearby wood and happily reverts to early childhood, playing house and swinging aimlesly on the rusty swing.  A series of small incidents lead Wynne to suspect that George might be the perpetrator of violent sex crimes that have taken place in the area and, desperate to show him her maturity, and heedless of the danger, she sets out to investigate.

An odd little film that ultimately appears not to have a point, ‘I Start Counting’ meanders from scene to scene at a sombulant pace, throwing up lots of dead ends and unanswered questions. The script was adapted from a moderately successful novel of the same name, but the nuances and psychological twists and turns of the written word seem to have been lost in the journey from page to screen. It’s a well-made film, but gives very little to the viewer in terms of genuine suspense or insight, although historians and sociologists and mid-century enthusiasts like me may value its portrayal of New Town Britain* in the late 1960’s, and record enthusiasts (like me) enjoy the scenes set in a groovy disc emporium, complete with West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band LP’s and space age plastic bubble listening posts.

The most notable feature of the whole venture is the star, Jenny Agutter, although it’s also the most problematic. Agutter was 17 during filming but, in school uniform, she looks considerably younger than even the 15 year old character she is playing, and the emphasis on her sexual attractiveness in both the film and its attendant publicity material seems unacceptable today.

Island Idol Basil Kirchin provided music for three out of the four films Greene made before he relocated to the states, including 'I Start Counting', and here's the opening sequence with its beautiful, wispy title song, as sung by Lindsey Moore.

* It was filmed in Bracknell in Hertfordshire, like 'I Want What I Want' and 'The Offence' from a few years later. Part Utopia, part work in progress, everything seems to be under construction, a new world in the making. The church that Wynne attends looks more like a space age bachelor pad than a place of worship, and it's slap bang in the middle of a building site. See 'Bracknell' tab at the bottom of this post for more stuff about the place.

I Start Counting

His Name Is P.C Strange

'The Strange Affair' (1968) is a fairly standard police drama, enlivened by director David Greene’s gentle counter cultural flourishes and a great score of noodling guitars and polite free jazz from the incredible Basil Kirchin.

The story concerns new police constable Tom Strange (fresh-faced Michael York, resembling a less pustulent Cristiano Ronaldo) who, in the course of about two weeks, goes from being an optimistic and principled young copper ("I believe in principles of order; the inevitability of justice") to a disgraced criminal with a scabby hole in either cheek after getting embroiled in cover-ups and fit-ups and impaled on the wrong end of a gangster’s electric drill.

The film begins by portraying a lost ‘Blue Lamp’ world of friendly bobbies strolling around bombsite London, chuckling at naughty kids (and, at one point, helping someone to flytip an old mattress!) before ramping up the violence and corruption levels to ‘Sweeney’ proportions. Interestingly, corruption is shown from both angles: police officers that take bribes to turn a blind eye to crime; police officers that bend the law to punish criminals – with the latter seemingly turning out to be the less acceptable of the two evils.

Strange’s love interest is played by young, toothy Susan George, a promiscuous, underage, face-painted hippy called Fred who follows a hairy group called The Hieronymus Bosch, and isn’t satisfied until she’s shared a bath, a bed and a giant inflatable ball (you’ll need to see the clip below) with the idealistic new recruit. To her credit, she sticks with him, even after his impromptu face drilling, but that may be motivated by guilt after finding out that their bath, bed and ball session was secretly filmed by her permissive, immoral Aunt and Uncle, and is now doing the rounds in every porn pit in Soho.

Throw an obsessive Sergeant into the mix (the ridiculously over-expressive Jeremy Kemp) and an ex-bent-copper turned gang lord running a drugs ring out of Battersea Heliport with the aid of a his two grinning, psychotic Mod sons, a sexy air hostess and a Maharishi clone with an army of white clad followers, then you have just enough elements to keep you occupied for ninety minutes, even if you’re never quite on the edge of your seat. Still, a nice spin on a familiar theme and nice music, too, here serving as a slinky soundtrack to the aforementioned ‘big ball’ scene.

The Strange Affair