Monday, September 24, 2007
The Wicker Man and the Seventies
I finally saw The Wicker Man - the 1973 version. I must have been distracted in the early seventies because I only became aware of this film in recent years when people started saying it was the greatest this or that. Well, it is good, but, as with all Anthony Schaffer plots, it's far too neat and tidy. For the real, bloody, shocking thing, see Michael Reeves' Witchfinder General. Wicker also looked quaint - even Britt Ekland's naked writhing had a naughty, seventies air about it. (Actually - another Effie moment here - it wasn't Britt, it was a body double.) This quaintness suggests to me that the current enthusiasm for the movie is an aspect of the seventies revival which seems to be taking place. Life on Mars explicitly portrayed the seventies as a more authentic, though more brutal, time. And now we have Tarantino making a grindhouse movie. There's also a lot of seventies-esque architecture and design around. And, to seal this argument, one of our leading trendsetters, style gurus and fashion statements - me - will move into a seventies flat later this week. I suspect this is all about nostalgia for a harder-edged, more vividly coloured time, a dangerous time but one which offered clearer identities. In the seventies, it was possible to know exactly who you were.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
Ah yes, the seventies: harvest gold, avocado green, and whatever-it-was orange. Will you have shag carpets in your new digs? Are you abandoning Norfolk?
ReplyDeleteWithout reading the gory details, the synopsis of that movie sounded a bit too close for comfort to real events at my alma mater in the '70's. Think I'll give that one a pass.
ReplyDelete...especially if you were black, pakistani, gay, or just looked odd.
ReplyDeletewe never had paedophiles though. we had nonces, instead. a much better term, imo. (according to wiki this is yet another anagram: not on normal courtyard exercise. and on Today I discover that Chav is another anagram! soon the entire language will consist of anagrams).
erm, oh yes. Schaffer's Wickerman is probably the most overrated film I know of. It's just awful.
Witchfinder General is very good as I remember it. Yeah, Vincent has the edge on Chris in sinister - it's the voice, I think. He'd have made a convincing nonce.
I have little time for Tarantino. He always looks like he's masturbating out of shot. Yes, he's a bit of a wanker, I think.
the great sage, Noel Gallagher, once said ''every generation has their Beatles''. Every generation has their golden decade too - usually the one they only just missed growing up in. In ten years time they'll certainly be celebrating the 80s - god knows why - or how.
oh, yeah. I'm not sure it was even Ekland's voice on the finished movie. Either way it was a strange sound.
ReplyDeleteAs to "in the seventies, it was possible to know exactly who you were." I sure thought I did. Less sure about that now. Then again, I think I understand Dylan's point far better now than then:
ReplyDeleteYes, my guard stood hard when abstract threats
Too noble to neglect
Deceived me into thinking
I had something to protect
Good and bad, I define these terms
Quite clear, no doubt, somehow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.
No, not abandoing Norfolk. Lovely bit of Dylan that.
ReplyDeleteThe Seventies were a grim time. Wimpy Bars still ruled and chunks of our cities still looked as if they hadn't got much further than the Second World War. Most beer was disgusting, Red Barrel stylee. Tough-looking but decidedly ridiculous characters stalked the imagination - remember Bodie, Doyle and Cowley, or Oliver Reed going up in smoke in The Devils. Much Sixties music had collapsed into pomp rock. A few toffs still tottered about making a last stand and it's hard to recall any of them with affection. Lord Lambton, anyone?
ReplyDeleteOn the good side, Dylan produced Blood on the Tracks and Apocalyse Now just made the decade in 1979. In terms of what most still affects us, I'd say the countryside which hadn't yet been raped by the Common Agricultural Policy.
In the UK, the Seventies were a rather pathetic time, imho. The real action was elsewhere, particularly in Latin America where the CIA and the Generals were in full swing and in the bestially-ruled Soviet Union which managed to top the decade by invading Afghanistan. No regrets that an awful decade is long gone.
Hmm. I thought the way the film shows an entirely pagan society- eg the woman giving her kid a frog for a cough- was pretty good, ditto Britt Ekland's writhing. The funny hobgoblin's dancing to the cliff was really funny. You should also check out Halloween 4 or 5- the one with the crazy Irish toy manufacturer. Brilliant pisstake of all that Celtic crap.
ReplyDeleteI was a 70s teen. Everywhere reeked of tobacco. People dropped dead from drug overdoses. London was a lot dirtier and darker. Especially when rubbish was up to your chest in what were then grubby Notting Hill squares like the one, Powis Square, in Performance. But that was then, and this is now. What ever happend to Dan van Vliet?
He does paintings, Captain - I saw a small exhibtion once, they were very bad.
ReplyDeleteWhat's wrong with the 1890s?
ReplyDeleteI've always loved 'The Wicker Man', but the re-edited longer version with all the snail sex.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I'd choose to listen to Chrisopher Lee's so-bad-it's-good album than watch the dire Death Proof (half of the Grindhouse double bill).
Sorry to spoil the party, but that's not actually Britt Ekland writhing - it's a double.
ReplyDeleteI know, read the post, anon.
ReplyDeleteTechnically speaking, it's only a buttock double.
ReplyDeleteErudite as ever, Dick, but surely, strictly speaking, it was a full back double - 50 per cent of the total body as it were.
ReplyDelete'I was Monty's buttock double'
ReplyDeleteBryan, as you know, I would normally bow down to your superior knowledge. However, Britt was pregnant at the time and her then boyfriend was Rod Stewart who wouldn't allow her to appear naked in the film. He stood in for her during that scene and it actually Rod’s rear you can see.
ReplyDeleteI only draw this to your attention so that you might alter your 50% claim. Given Rod’s unique asymmetry, vis-à-vis his nose, his back portion is only 30-40% of his total surface area.
The Wicker Man' status as a classic has more to do with it's production history than it's own merits. It's first release was very limited in an apparently deliberate attempt to kill it, and it had been so cut as to make it difficult to follow the plot. What it actually acheived was to make it a martyr to film geeks.
ReplyDeleteDick - of course, why didn't I think of that?
ReplyDeleteI hadn't a clue who I was in the 70s. But then zeitgeists always seem to pass me by.
ReplyDeleteLorraine Peters was the body-double for the back/writhing scene. she;s the same woman who was crying at the gravestone
ReplyDelete