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Was supposed to be THE film to pull the Brit filmmaking industry up

posted 17 years ago by t-paulsm
2 replies | jump to latest

Interesting how this film was the one made & spun to be THE film that was to pull a suffering British filmmaking industry out of its fincial slump - it almost did the opposite unfortunatley! Not a great critical success, and by no means a great film, it sure was ambitious but somewhat misguided. I believe the film that unexpectedly assisted with Brit films getting back on track and admired by the general North American population was MONA LISA http://imdb.com/title/tt0091538/ with Bob Hoskins & Cathy Tyson, and then, naturallly, along came one of my fave films of all time WITHNAIL & I http://imdb.com/title/tt0094336/ which really pushed things along well for the industry in Britain.

I caught it in the theatre whn it came out as I was looking forward to seeing how they portrayed some of the areas I lived in when I lived in London in the mid-late 70's. Though not the same time setting as when I was there, many areas (like Camden Town) didn't start movin' on up & becoming absolutely unaffordable until the mid to late 80's. Some of the elements in this movie still existed in '77 when I was there. At that time, I was a young Teddy Boy, and our neighbourhood had an interesting mix of Teds, punks, bohemian types (it was still an artits run area then), and so on, so some of the conflicts were portrayed in ways that I clearly understood.

Let's face it ABOLUE BEGINNERS was fantastic in its stylization, but quite wonky and off kilter in its pacing, and rather convoluted with its story line.
I still love this flick for what it is, but it's by no means a modern musical masterpiece!

T.Paul
http://www.myspace.com/t_paul
T.Paul

[–] TrevorAclea 16 years ago

It was one of a trio of films from Goldcrest that were supposed to turn them into a major international power. The Mission more or less broke even, Absolute Beginners flopped, but the real damage was done by the catastrophic Revolution, which was such a massive money loser it never went into wide release in the US and made the city pull out of UK film production financing. Without Channel 4, next to nothing would have been made in the following ten years.

"Life flash before your eyes? Cup of tea, cup of tea, almost got a shag, cup of tea."

[–] henrimaine 7 years ago

I was not around in the mid eighties Britain to see this movie as it came out or know anything about the news coverage at the time. But still, even I had heard about this movie as being the hope of the British movie industry and its downfall. Now, having seen it for the first time, I must say that I got what I expected. The movie is a stylish extravaganza, which is quite fun to watch if you know beforehand what to expect. But story wise it's very uneven, jumping from one topic to another and then suddenly its over. I can only imagine what all these sets must have cost. No wonder the studio went bankrupt. I also wonder as to why they chose Julien Temple to direct it, given that he had not done any full length movies before. Perhaps the producers imagined that Temple must have some special sensitivity to pop culture, given that he had hung around with Sex Pistols before.