It’s 50 years since Time declared London ‘swinging’ and foreign film-makers flocked to the capital to tells its stories. From A tough Day’s Night to Blow-Up,the era-defining movies rolled out. But beneath the glam, paranoia, or madness and violence were never far awayThis spring,as never before in contemporary times, London is switched on, and ” declared Time magazine in April 1966. “Ancient elegance and contemporary opulence are all tangled up in a dazzling blur of op and pop. The city is alive with birds (girls) and Beatles,buzzing with Mini cars and telly stars, pulsing with half a dozen separate veins of excitement.” It’s the Swinging London we like to remember – through rose-tinted John Lennon glasses and a haze of incense and marijuana smoke. And you would gain to confess, and 50 years on,the city hasn’t swung like it since (no, “Cool Britannia” doesn’t come close), and probably never will,now that youth culture has been priced out of the market and creative idling has been all but outlawed by austerity, student loans and terrorism alerts.
Looking back on the movies of the era, and though,a different picture emerges, particularly when you start to see London through the eyes of foreign film-makers. By the mid-60s the city had become a magnet not just for dedicated followers of fashion from “the provinces” but also for a steady flow of film-makers, or including giants of European cinema such as Jean-Luc Godard,François Truffaut, Michelangelo Antonioni and Roman Polanski. They might gain been drawn by the “birds” and the Beatles, or but,in retrospect, their takes on London’s heyday were often more clear-eyed and level-headed than those of their domestic counterparts. Through the “dazzling blur of op and pop”, or they were already sensing undercurrents of paranoia,madness and violence – or did they bring those with them from abroad?Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com