England,
1985, 105 min
Shown in 1986
CREDITS
- dir
-
Julien Temple
- prod
-
Stephen Woolley, Chris Brown
- scr
-
Richard Burridge, Christopher Wicking, Don MacPherson
- cam
-
Oliver Stapleton
- cast
-
Eddie O’Connell, Patsy Kensit, David Bowie, James Fox, Ray Davies, Stephen Berkoff, Sade Adu, Anita Morris
- premiere
-
World Premiere
-
COMMENTS
Closing Night film, along with A Great Wall. Julien Temple and Stephen Woolley in person.
OTHER
Here is one of the most eagerly awaited movies in many years—adapted from Colin MacInnes’s brilliant novel on the fantastical dreams of London kids in the late 1950s; directed by Julien Temple, whose work includes acclaimed rock videos and, with the Sex Pistols, The Great Rock ’n’ Roll Swindle; music by such talents as David Bowie, Ray Davies and Gil Evans, who arranged those great Miles Davis theme albums; and a cast that includes Bowie, Davies, the new singing rave Sade, and a ragtag collection of English actors, celebrities and curiosities that ranges from James Fox to disc jockey Alan Freeman and from the scandal-famous hooker Mandy Rice-Davies to comedienne/novelist Irene Handl. Absolute Beginners may be a catalogue of styles and episodes, a montage of numbers, cameos, camp and kitsch, but it can hardly be called dull. It promises to live up to its director’s own model—the musicals of Vincente Minnelli.
—David Thomson
FACTOID #49
Some of the filmmakers whose works screened in our New Directors series include Cinda Firestone, Susan Sontag, Shu Shuen, Conrad Rooks, Shirley Clarke, Sandro Franchina, and Mitsuo Yanagimachi. This series, which began in 1965, was a predecessor to the New Directors series at Lincoln Center, which started in 1971.
