User Reviews

Schoolteacher Colin (Michael Crawford) is sexless in swinging London. He is both annoyed and jealous of his neighbor Tolen (Ray Brooks), a playboy who has a parade of beautiful women marching into his apartment. It's girls, girls, girls, everywhere girls. Nancy Jones (Rita Tushingham) is new to the city and learning her way.

This is light fun in the sex comedy space. Its editing and story telling is downright modern. The directing reminds me of Edgar Wright. It's great to do both sides of the sexual revolution story by following Nancy on her journey. I would get rid of the third flat-mate. She should have been the third. The rape is a surprising turn with one hilarious line. It's a fun look at 60's London and its changing sexual culture.

Let's get one thing straight ; for the vast majority of Londoners the so - called "Swinging Sixties" happened to somebody else,somewhere else.A few streets in the West End were a magnet for the rich children of the Chelsea Set who were determined to outdo the excesses of their parents as a perverted form of noblesse oblige.They were prepared to wear any clothes,no matter how outrageous,take any drug,no matter how dangerous,and embrace any music,no matter how pretentious.The more badly they behaved the more they attracted the attention of the opinion makers in the media,and the opinion makers looked upon their works and decided that they were a "Good Thing".Thus was born the myth of Swinging London;in truth an area of a few hundred square yards near "Liberty" where mummy did her shopping. Anne Jellicoe's play "The Knack" was adapted by Dick Lester,the Boswell of Swinging London.Mr Ray Brooks plays Tolen,a young man who has a way with the ladies.Mr Michael Crawford plays his chum who wishes to emulate him. Miss Rita Tushingham plays a young girl who falls under Tolen's spell. Set in a distinctly unswinging Victorian Terrace "The Knack" is an outstanding example of overblown self-indulgence.Not one of the leading characters is sympathetic,the dialogue is shockingly bad,the gags Goon Show rejects.Everyone involved seems to think they're in a clever witty movie,but I'm afraid they're labouring under a delusion.They are in fact involved in a clever - clever movie. I found the "comic" voice -overs and sub-titles tedious in the extreme. Endless bleached out shots of girls in mini skirts,Mr Brooks in black leather riding an Ariel Arrow (surely the least swinging motor cycle ever built) and Mr Crawford's tight trousers merely induced boredom. Eventually the whole swinging sixties/swinging London thing faded quietly away. Most ordinary Londoners noticed its departure about as much as they had noticed its arrival.Films like "The Knack" and "Georgy Girl","Blow up" and "Darling" that helped fuel the myth now seem like curios,their true value merely historical. If you're not old enough to know what it was really like in the 1960s "A kind of loving" will give you a much more honest picture. If you want to see what mods vs rockers was really about watch "Quadrophenia". If you want to see blokes dressed like Tolen but not inhabiting a fantasy world watch "The Leather Boys". If you want to be irritated beyond measure by a film full of smug self-regard watch "The Knack".

As the '60's progressed, a sea change took place in British film comedy. Norman Wisdom and St.Trinians were suddenly out-of-date ( though they kept on going for a few more years ), and a new wave of Britcoms appeared, among them 'The Knack'.

Richard Lester had just made 'A Hard Days' Night' and brought the same mindset to this picture. Coming a year before Time magazine published its famous 'Swinging London' article, it depicts a Britain on the cusp of a cultural and ( more importantly ) sexual revolution. As Spike Millgan later put it: "Queen Victoria died in 1960!".

It is arty ( shot in glorious black and white ), sexist, often irritating, yet manages in its own way to say something serious about human relationships.

Michael Crawford stars as 'Colin', a shy, repressed schoolteacher brassed off because his boarder, the good-looking 'Tolen' ( Ray Brooks ) has a knack for 'pulling the birds'. Tolen is the Russell Brand of his day; girls are literally queueing outside his room at all times for sex. Tolen offers Colin a masterclass in the art of seduction.

Tolen's attitude to the fairer sex is: "I see, I want and I take", the sort of chauvinistic attitude probably responsible for Women's Lib in the first place. But even his powers are about to be tested to the limit when along comes Nancy ( Rita Tushingham ) a Northern lass newly arrived in London in search of lodgings. Nancy is immune to Tolen's 'Mr.Tight Trousers' persona, and when he tries to get fresh with her she cries 'Rape!'.

A number of reviewers have described the movie as 'dated'. They are absolutely right. But it is fascinating for that reason alone. It is now a quaint museum piece, the sexual attitudes and mores of the era are on view and are fascinating. It may surprise some to learn that the play on which the film is based was written by a woman - Ann Jellicoe.

Lester took the play and opened it out ( with help from screenwriter Charles Wood ), turning it into a visual delight. Surrealism had finally joined the comedy mainstream. The jokes come at you so fast you need to be quick to pick them up. For instance, when Colin wonders whether to let his front room to a monk, we suddenly cut to a bus full of monks. When he gets angry and tries to keep Tolen out of the house by boarding up the front door, the film turns into a mini-lecture on carpentry.

Throughout a Greek chorus of elderly people comment on events. "I know what she's looking for and its not the Y.W.C.A.!". Their remarks are much the same as you would hear nowadays. Being too old for sex themselves, they frown on the younger generation for being able to do it. Its these quirky flourishes that gives the film much of its charm. The famous scene where Colin, Nancy and Tom push a bed through the streets of London employs a style that was later used on 'The Monkees' and 'The Goodies'.

The cast are excellent, in particular Donal Donnelly as an eccentric Irishman with a mad compulsion to paint everything white. Michael Crawford's 'Colin' has all the naivety of his later ( better known ) role of 'Frank Spencer'. Tushingham's innocent waif is appealing. As 'Tolen', all quiff and dark glasses, Ray Brooks is the epitome of '60's cool, a man who has women falling for him like dominoes. Watching this again recently, it occurred to me what a great vehicle for Peter Cook and Dudley Moore this would have made. The humour is broadly in line with what the duo were doing on 'Not Only But Also'. You can easily imagine Cook as 'Tolen' and Moore as 'Colin'. Perhaps these characters inspired the ones they later played in 'Bedazzled'.

The film has its share of longueurs, however. Colin pretending to be a lion is something I think it could have done without. And Nancy's cries of 'Rape!' to passers-by have ensured it a high place on the 'it has not aged well' movie lists.

'Comedy has a new freedom' gushed Newsweek magazine at the time of its release. Absolutely. Rather than being brushed under the carpet, sex was now openly talked about on screen. There was to be no going back. Nudity and bad language would soon enter the equation.

I must mention John Barry's marvellous score. He was on the top of his game here ( having just done 'Goldfinger' and 'Zulu' ) and the music perfectly accompanies the offbeat action. You will be humming that gorgeous title theme for days.

If you want a British movie that has 'Sixties' written all over it, look no further. It also manages to be a life-affirming, witty and accomplished piece of work.

Although I've marked this review as containing spoilers, it's difficult to judge what might actually 'spoil' any first-time viewing of this film as it is primarily an artistic experience rather than a straightforward story. Nevertheless, there is a plot (of sorts), points of which I will refer to.

When I first watched The Knack, I came to it totally unprepared. Naively, I was expecting this to be a straightforward situation comedy piece and found myself left rather cold by characters I couldn't empathise with, dialogue that just didn't seem realistic, baffling and rather unfunny routines which seemed to go on interminably and a plot which seemed to lurch from one scenario to another as though someone was making it up as they went along. Without its solid cast, lovely John Barry score and myriad nostalgic views of a bygone London, I probably would have switched off through a combination of boredom and confusion. However, I stuck with it and towards the end things started to click a little as I gradually became more attuned to the film's wavelength.

Consequently, I decided to give it another try a couple of weeks later to see if it really was as bad as I'd imagined or whether having different expectations from the outset would enhance the viewing experience. I'm glad to say that I did enjoy the film a lot more the second time around.

The Knack is an allegorical story to be interpreted, rather than just followed. My own interpretation after this second viewing is that the whole piece is a metaphor for the position of sexual intercourse in society. The whole film is punctuated by comments from bystanders consisting of the older generation which are judgemental and disapproving, representing how sexual intercourse, although a vital part of life and essential for the continuation of the species, is generally taboo, deemed to be dirty and immoral by the senior cross-section of society, with more than a hint of jealousy towards the youth they themselves have lost.

Arriving into the lifestyle of big city comes young, attractive and naively innocent Nancy Jones (Rita Tushingham), the metaphor for a woman coming of age. Her unfamiliarity with how things work in the big city (eg the luggage lockers at the station) demonstrate how she's unaware of how relationships in her life work now that she's unwittingly become an object of sexual desire. And even though she's free of any notion of sexual promiscuity, the fact that she looks beautiful means that the public automatically assume she's 'up for it' and putting herself around, hence she's the target of criticisms from the older onlookers. However, women soon learn not to take men's smooth-talk at face value, witnessed by the scene in the clothes store where Nancy catches the salesman out giving the same compliments to every female customer who comes in.

Then there's the young man, and he comes in three forms. First, there's Tolen (Ray Brooks), the man who's successful at pulling the women. At the start of the film we see dozens of slim, curvy women all dressed identically, queuing up to enter his bedroom, symbolising the numbers he goes through to satisfy his desires without him ever seeing them as individual people - they're all just sex objects in his eyes. Tolen never uses his first name, nor will he reveal it, suggesting that there are aspects of his character that he had to shed or suppress in order to achieve and maintain his status as the great lover.

Then there's Colin (Michael Crawford), the man who wants sex but can't get it, and his carnal desires border on the downright lustful at times, hence he sees himself as being one of the dirty old men peering through the fence as the teenage schoolgirls play sports. He's jealous of Tolen's success with women. First of all he tries to learn from him, and the water-skiing episode shows him just trailing far behind in Tolen's wake, finding himself out of his depth. Then he tries competing against him, thinking that it's just a question of having the right equipment to attract the opposite sex, so he gets himself a bigger bed. Size envy?

And then there's Tom (Donal Donnelly), the man who's more interested in his hobby to think much about sex. His passionate hobby (in this case, painting everything white) is of no interest to anyone else, but unincumbered by sexual thoughts he's a benign presence who's a genuine friend to everyone, behaving as he does without any hidden agenda.

So, events transpire to bring Nancy together with the three men. Tom is just friendly towards her. Colin is smitten with her. Tolen sees her as just another potential conquest. He commences his method of being dominant. Colin, meanwhile, should be dominant also as he's fooling around pretending to be a lion, but he just shows how hapless he is, whereas Tolen is far more dominant in his role of 'lion tamer' and soon has Nancy under his spell.

But there's a fine line between dominance and force. When Nancy claims rape, all three men quickly shy away from her - although no one else in society, it seems, is interested in her claims, perhaps a reflection on the times that people would easily judge a girl by assuming that just because she happened to be good-looking she must have been asking for it.

There's another man in the plot, though we never see him. Rory is mentioned early on by Tolen as another man who is a hit with the girls. Tolen doesn't see him as a serious rival at that stage, but wants to be associated with him, thinking it will be to his own benefit. There are further references to Rory later in the film, suggesting he is becoming a bigger hit with the women. And by the latter stages, when Tolen's confidence and reputation are crumbling after Nancy's claims, Tolen finds the hard way that the women are now only interested in Rory and not him. He had not appreciated the transient nature of his status as the top dog in town, and the girls have now all moved on to the next big thing.

We never see Colin finally 'get his leg over', but his relationship with Nancy blossoms as she builds his confidence, allowing him to be himself rather than trying to be like Tolen. The film ends with him and Nancy walking off together to share a future that will be meaningful while, significantly, Tolen watches from the sidelines, having suddenly joined the ranks of the bitter, jealous older generation.

The film's style, which includes lots of imagery and various instances of trick effects, would have seemed far more innovative back in the mid-1960s than is the case nowadays. For instance, there's a sequence involving the characters going into and coming out of lots of different doors, an idea that's been put to use many times since in things like Scooby Doo cartoons, so in that respect it probably hasn't aged well. A lot of the comedy just isn't that funny (an example being Colin picking up a milk crate thinking it's his briefcase, whilst the unwitting milkman has picked up Colin's briefcase) and the five minutes of screentime where Rita Tushingham continually says "Rape!" in a light-hearted manner is rather uncomfortable, given that it should never be a light-hearted subject.

However, The Knack is lively and original, and has depth. It will certainly quickly alienate many viewers, but should also still have the power to win a few fans. 6 out of 10.