Peter Watkins’ Privilege (1967/New Yorker Films DVD/Project X/Science
Fiction/Rock Music)
Picture: B- Sound: C+ Extras: B- Film: B+
NOTE: This DVD edition has gone out of
print, but BFI has issued a Blu-ray version, though it is Region B locked. You can read more about it at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/10015/Peter+Watkins%E2%80%99+Privilege
You hear
about lost masterpieces all the time and some snobs only want to worry about
lost films so old that they act like newer films do not matter, but all films
matter and when they are as important as Peter Watkins’ Privilege. After his falling
out with the BBC over his short masterwork The
War Game (reviewed elsewhere on this site) he made this remarkably chilling
tale of a pop singer named Steven Shorter (played by one-time Manfred Mann lead
singer Paul Jones, just as he had gone solo) who has become the biggest singing
sensation and pop/media star in the world.
Playing the tortured rebel role, his adoration starts with teen girls
and is at such a pitch of mania that he is the biggest sensation in England.
However, there
is more to his success. The marketing
(less common in 1967 than now) is all over the place and his handlers (smug as
they are) intend to continue his success no matter what the cost to their
budgets or the man himself. Of course,
people love him and it has even become a distraction for the many things in
life that really matter in this near-future England. The Christian Church in England is in deep
decline, but the government has become far more nationalistic and when the
church hierarchy cut a deal with the government and Shorters’ people that he
should repent to bring “patriots” and new nationalists to the church, all
oblige. However, it is an act that
causes a slow crack in “Shorter-Mania” and the repercussions will be
unforgettable in a film that is totally convincing.
Four
years ahead of Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork
Orange (1971) which Watkins rightly claims has at least one scene from this
film lifted from it for the Kubrick classic, it is as important a film and like
Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom (1960)
got its director banned from filmmaking in England permanently. Unlike Powell’s masterwork, which resurfaced
and the self-censorship Kubrick applied by having the power to pull with his
film soon after its release in England, Privilege
has been unavailable for decades and it is apparent that censorship from England
to branches of Universal Pictures in the U.K. and U.S. are responsible for its
absence.
However,
it has lost hardly any of its power, irony, edge or luster, only growing in
time with nuance, power and possessing an uncanny accuracy about how bad media
manipulation could and did get. Though
inspired by the cycle of early 1960s teen idols (Fabian, Paul Anka, Frankie
Avalon) who were safer than Elvis and the like as the Rock Genre temporarily
died before The Beatles arrived, Watkins applied the Swinging London look to
the film in its costume design and sets, resulting in what will now look like
the very dark side of Austin Powers to the youngest generation, but means much
more than a mere fashion statement of any kind.
The proto-fascist looking tops should give one a hint of the worst to
come and the film also deserves credit for being the forerunner of several
counterculture Rock Operas (including the original recording of and 1975 film
of The Who’s Tommy, which this is a
year or two head of, as well as De Palma’s Phantom
Of The Paradise, Russell’s Lisztomania
and the Bee Gees/Peter Frampton Sgt.
Pepper’s film in their sending up of corporate music culture) on stage and
the big screen.
So,
without the history, it is a great film and it reaffirms Watkins as one of the
greatest British filmmakers of all time.
This extends to the casting choices.
Jones has a great singing voice and the pleasant, safe look that made
him perfect for this part, while model Jean Shrimpton is does a fine job of
playing his would-be girlfriend in casting that was controversial because
neither were actors and the result is that they were unnecessarily attacked in
performances that were exactly on target for the film. This would be repeated again by Michelangelo
Antonioni with his leads in Zabriskie
Point (1970) and befall Kubrick when he cast star actor Ryan O’Neal in Barry Lyndon (1975) even later. Jones & Shrimpton were reportedly not
happy with the film or themselves in it at the time, but Jones moved on to more
interesting acting work just the same.
The film
is explicitly political, yet also darkly humorous, ironic and clever throughout
without being smug or belaboring points.
All the events feel very real and play out in a real time that is always
involving and compelling to watch. I was
also amazed by the strong supporting cast that included Jeremy Child, Norman
Pitt and Michael Barrington as well as first-time actors with little to no
experience. Helping this is a strong
script by Norman Bogner, Johnny Speight and Watkins is a remarkable,
innovative, influential piece of writing what is one of the greatest lost
classics in British Cinema history. Now,
it is back and like I Am Cuba or a
lost version of a great film that was not always deemed as such, Privilege is bound to be much talked
about, studied, rediscovered, imitated, resume its amazing influence and point
to an even more innovative British Cinema that could have been if it had not
been squashed.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image took a while to restore in collaboration
with Universal Pictures, was shot by the now-famous cinematographer Peter Suschitzky
(the now longtime collaborator of David Cronenberg) in 35mm and
Technicolor. Watkins had not worked in
the format or color of any kind, but the results here are smooth and
impressive, even though he had issues with the camera’s lack of mobility. Furthermore, there is a complex use of color
on the part of both men, realized at the time in three-strip dye-transfer Technicolor
prints that this transfer often gives a pleasant approximation of in this High
Definition transfer. The Dolby Digital
2.0 Mono is not bad for its age, with some character and the interesting music
in tact. Mike Leander did the very good
scoring of the film.
Extras
include stills, a text filmography on Watkins, original trailer for the film, a
fine 40-page booklet inside the DVD case with several essays, illustrations,
film info and another self-interview by Watkins and the 1962 short film Lonely Boy. This film about the rise of a young Paul Anka
(in his early years at ABC-Paramount records, named for one of his biggest
hits) was the model for Watkins to make this film on. It shows how Anka is groomed by his handlers
and the increasingly phony of entertainment he lands up in. It shows him as precocious and in control to
some extent, but Watkins saw the chilling downside to the whole affair and took
it to its logical extreme in his film.
If there
was ever a must-see film, Privilege
is it. Highly recommended!!!
- Nicholas Sheffo
