O, Dreamland (1953)

[Des]

Anderson, of course, drew on Jean Vigo's Zero de Conduite (http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=Vie ... id/uploads ) for If, so he may have got the idea for O Dreamland from Vigo's A Propos de Nice (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAY5KNSoS2o ).

Crikey, they've even got L'Atalante, with the great Michel Simon and the radiant Dita Parlo, who also appears in Renoir's La Grande Illusion: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Sqe5SlrNZU .

Got the box set of Vigo's complete works (such as it is) so the youtube stuff is 4 losers.
viewtopic.php?f=46&t=9580

[AndyM]

Oh, and Anderson/Vigo - one key difference: Vigo celebrated life, Anderson was a misanthrope.

[Ian M]

The last one I watched was Fish Tank which suggested teenagers who live in council estates spend all our time swearing, boozing, smoking, shagging their mum's boyfriend, being obnoxious to everyone etc

A truly bizarre reading of an excellent film!

[Pete Fowler]

There's a lot of seeing dated material through present-day prisms here. It's like me analysing Aftermath from a post-feminist point of view - but however much it's so painfully obvious that it's ideologically unsound, it was a record that was far, far more impacting in the year in which it was released than the Beatles' albums of the same time. 1965 and 1966 belonged to the Stones and Dylan; the Beatles were beneath the radar until Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever.

And I don't give a damn, to be honest, that Lindsay Anderson is seen as a patronising, offensive, misanthropic misogynist (if that's not tautology): nothing can rub out of my mind the sheer bloody sense of exhiliration when I first saw If.... It was a life-changing film for so many of us, despite the fact that even at the time there were moments of ridiculous pretension.

[AndyM]

If.....was the one time Anderson got it right, so I'm happy to join your acclaim for it, Pete. He got it right because he knew that public school culture from first-hand experience, and so found a coherent target for his venom; he was on home turf rather than trying to depict the proles and misfiring; and because it was the one time he was able to depict gay desire without his sad hang-ups getting in the way. The gay romance in If..... is lyrical, non-judgemental and amazingly ahead of its time.

[Adam Blake]

the Beatles were beneath the radar until Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever.

Really? "Tomorrow Never Knows" just another pop song? Not daring and clever like "Stupid Girl"?

Oh well. Another illusion shattered. More scales falling from the eyes...:)

(The 60s are so much better remembered by people who were too young to have been there. They get things in the right order and remember important details. If it was left to you acid casualties there'd be no more 'special editions' of Mojo magazine or 'remastered with extra tracks' cd re-issues of "Piper At The Gates Of Dawn"... No sense of cultural responsibility. Typical 60s attitude.)

[AndyM]

I was there. Me and my cousins kept playing 'I Am The Walrus' and giggling because it said "knickers". Mind you, we were only eight, six and five.

[Adam Blake]

Oh, I was there too. I remember being scared shitless by the orchestral rushes on "A Day In The Life". But, you know, I wasn't like, there... I was eating Bar Sixes and worrying about whether or not it was OK to play with girls while some people were leaping about barefoot and communing with Vedic deities....

[AndyM]

......man.

Your sentence was crying out for a man, man.