Richard Lester (1965)

Ann Jellicoe – who died in August this year, a few weeks after her ninetieth birthday – is best known as the author of two stage plays, The Sport of My Mad Mother and The Knack.  The latter, performed at the Royal Court in 1962, became a successful film three years later, making money and winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes.  Charles Wood adapted the Jellicoe play for the screen; Richard Lester – in between his two Beatles films, A Hard Day’s Night (1964) and Help! (1965) – directed.  The Knack … and How to Get It hasn’t aged well – except for the John Barry score (see more below) and as an exemplar of a self-consciously hip, zany British film of its time.  The expanded title, the ellipsis especially, announces the arch tone.  The visuals (David Watkin was DoP) are punctuated throughout by occasional speeded-up sequences, freeze frames and droll stating-the-obvious subtitles.  Wood and Lester have added too a running commentary on the youthful protagonists’ behaviour from a succession of disapproving oldsters – a kind of grumpy Greek chorus.  On the plus side, The Knack does yield the guaranteed historical interest of a film shot on location in London half a century ago, complete with such redolent period details as a Green Shield stamps book and Reveille magazine on a newsstand.

The knack in question is that of getting girls.  A prologue, the most stylish sequence in the whole picture, introduces the theme and two of the principals – the unusually named Tolen (Ray Brooks), who has the knack, and Colin (Michael Crawford), who hasn’t and is anxious to acquire it.   Over the opening titles, these two young men interact with a line of young women wearing the same outfit – tight white ribbed polo-neck jumper, medallion necklace, light-coloured skirt (the film is black and white).  Their uniform and their glazed appearance give the girls the look of mass-produced mannequins.  A few, as they wait their turn to be appraised by Tolen and to reject Colin, do aphrodisiac things – one consumes an oyster, another sprays perfume on – but in an automatic, disengaged way.   The sequence takes place in Colin’s house, where Tolen has a room.  The pair are friends but, more conspicuously, polar opposites. Tolen is a suavely voracious Don Juan, Colin an anxious, geeky schoolteacher.  Tolen’s appearance and lifestyle are a composite – Teddy Boy hairstyle, mod suit and tie, rocker’s motorbike, jazz records.  (Did Lester and Wood feel Tolen had to cover all these bases because the youth-of-today complaints from the middle-aged and elderly are wholly generic?)  The third principal, and the pivotal character, is the wide-eyed Nancy (Rita Tushingham), who arrives in London from the provinces.  Nancy is looking for a YWCA but ends up in Colin’s house, where her presence gradually shifts the balance of power.

Of the two other significant male characters, one who never appears makes a stronger impression than the one who does.  The single set of Ann Jellicoe’s play is a room in Colin’s house occupied by a tenant called Tom, who is decorating the place.  In the film, Tom (Donal Donnelly) arrives at Colin’s some way into the narrative, after hurriedly exiting his previous digs.  Tom does some painting and hangs around with the main characters but, with the action moving around the house and often outside it, he seems largely surplus to requirements.  The unseen Rory McBryde, on the other hand, develops a mythic status.  Rory is frequently invoked by Tolen in admiring terms as a man with the knack.  A late sequence takes place at the Royal Albert Hall, where the ranks of girls from the film’s opening, and many more, congregate for what’s advertised on a poster as Tolen and Rory’s ‘Old Friends Reunion’.  Some of the girls are holding placards emblazoned with Rory’s name; none of them appears to recognise Tolen.  He tries and fails ignominiously to enter the building, through the Artists Entrance via the queue of girls, who trample him underfoot.  A dishevelled Tolen returns to Colin’s house to discover that Nancy and Colin are now an item.   In the closing scene, these two walk off together hand in hand.  The vanquished Tolen joins the older generation’s chorus of disapproval.

The Knack‘s best-known bit (longer than I expected and quickly tiresome) involves Colin, Nancy and Tom pushing a large bed, which Colin will need once he’s got the knack, around London streets.  The film’s most startling and puzzling element is Nancy’s accusations of rape.  Tolen first gives Nancy an unwanted kiss on the lips then, when the two of them are out together, pesters Nancy again.  She faints and, as soon as she comes to, begins to shout that Tolen has raped her.  She continues to do so for several screen minutes, though she sometimes struggles to vocalise the word and, when she does, no one seems to hear her.  One of the friends with whom I watched the film, and who has read the play, tells me the words in Charles Wood’s script are reasonably faithful to those of the original concerning the alleged rape.  That faithfulness reflects Ann Jellicoe’s puzzling ambiguity.  Tolen’s reassuring remark to Nancy after he’s first kissed her – ‘no one’s going to rape you – girls don’t get raped without their consent’ – has the clear ring of feminist irony.  Yet Nancy, as Tolen approaches her in the park, warns ‘mister tight trousers’ to keep his distance in an increasingly hysterical speech that culminates in ‘Don’t come near me … come, come near me – come, come …’ before she swoons to the ground.  The absurdist levity of Lester’s direction, however, flattens out the seeming contradictions of the writing.  In theory, the alleged rape might be shocking because unexpected in this cartoonish context.  In the event, it’s just another example of the prevailing wacky superficiality.

Although she’d also played Nancy on stage, Rita Tushingham’s eccentric gamine look and one-level acting fit all too comfortably into the knowing, antic world of Richard Lester.  The underrated Ray Brooks is a rather different matter.   His playing of Tolen, precisely stylised in the early stages, takes on more naturalistic, even human shadings when Tolen starts losing the upper hand and his cool.  Michael Crawford doesn’t overdo Colin’s naïve underdog charm – even if the role, in retrospect, looks like a rehearsal for Frank Spencer.  (I’m assuming Crawford did his own stunts in The Knack, as he famously did in Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em.)   As Tom, Donal Donnelly is hyperactive and not as funny as he seems to think.  There are cameos from, among others, John Bluthal (an angry father), William Dexter (an oleaginous dress-shop owner), Dandy Nichols (Tom’s landlady) and Benedict Cumberbatch’s mother Wanda Ventham (a gym mistress).   John Barry’s witty, breezy music, which includes an enjoyable organ solo by Alan Haven, is a fine expression of the spirit of Swinging London cinema – and more.  The main melody’s yearning quality transcends the zeitgeist.

30 October 2017