Und morgen alles

This adaptation of the novel by Labour MP Wilfred Fienburgh depicts politics as a grubby business conducted by grubby people. To many at the time this may have been something of a revelation but we have long since ceased to harbour any illusions about politicians and see them for the self-serving s***s they really are.

The central character here is Johnnie Bryne who has been returned as Labour MP with an increased majority but is passed over for a senior post in Government. He finds consolation in the bottle and in the arms of a much younger woman. He treats appallingly a woman in the flat upstairs with whom he might perhaps have found happiness. He later learns that he has been overlooked because of his wife's communist leanings. They have since parted and being free of this encumbrance he is given a junior post by the Prime Minister.

Peter Finch picked up his third of five BAFTAS (the last being awarded posthumously) for his performance as Johnnie. Even by his standards he is simply superb in what is an unsympathetic role. The supporting cast is uniformly excellent notably Geoffrey Keen, Stanley Holloway, Michael Goodliffe, Paul Rogers and Billie Whitelaw. Ralph Thomas freely admitted that he was a journeyman director who made all kinds of films and was happy if he had an occasional hit. This film might not have been a hit in the commercial sense but as a piece of direction Thomas has surpassed himself. He is blessed to have such fine actors and a brilliant script by Nicholas Phipps and Mordecai Richler. Great score by Malcolm Arnold but I do not think the subject matter justifies the film being shot in Cinemascope.

Whatever ones political beliefs or affiliations this excellent film still resonates. After all, what Disraeli called the 'greasy pole' is as greasy as ever!

`No Love for Johnnie' is an enjoyable political drama whose sub-plot concerns the doomed love affair between the main character and a much younger woman. The nature of this relationship is undermined by the fact that 42 year old Johnnie Byrne is played by handsome, virile Peter Finch whereas Mary Peach playing 20 looks nearer 30 and Byrne's job as an MP in a Labour government would presumably make him even more attractive - remember Henry Kissinger's remark about the aphrodisiac nature of power?

The film takes a conventionally cynical view of politics; the Labour cabinet is referred to as `a gang of lawyers and university lecturers' so nothing much has changed since 1961. I felt that there was one too many shots of the admittedly magnificent Palace of Westminster from the other bank of the Thames and I certainly could not see any reason for Cinemascope as the action is almost exclusively indoors.

Stanley Holloway, always good value, playing a fellow-MP acts as a sort of conscious to Byrne but see if you can spot Oliver Reed in one scene with a waste-paper basket over his head, even then a party animal! And the brilliant Billie Whitelaw turns a neighbour who is little more than a doormat into a fully rounded character.

Maybe the `red menace' lurking in the background dates `No Love for Johnnie' but I found it most involving.

In 1963 John Prufumo a Conservative MP in the Cabinet had an affair with a model Christine Keeler.He made a statement in the Commons in which he lied.Subsequently he was forced to resign his post and as an MP and retire to private life.Keeler had been involved in a simultaneous affair with a Russian spy.Some of these ingredients are in this film.It probably showed the workings of parliament more to the public than any other media.there being no broadcast of parliament at that time.It is a fine but long forgotten film.One can only wonder why.Incidentally there are some fine views of the old Euston Station which was vandalised by its demolition in 1963.They subsequently wanted to do the same to St pancras,but thankfully this was successfully opposed.The only slight problem is the pointless use of Cinemascope.In fact it is rather irritating at times.

Count the number of reviews on this site for this 45 year old film. Less than seven at the time of writing. As a life long film fan I have now heard of and seen this movie (thanks to a fellow film fan on this site) but it remains very difficult to view. The number of reviews are indicative of how available it is to view be it on TV or via specialised cinemas. An asset very little exploited and that was a big clue as to why.

Despite the films age it is still relevant especially to British politics. Nothing at all has changed that the author was criticising via this fictional account of Westminster and its residents. Love affairs, power hungry, greed, self serving and back stabbing. It all still there - just read the newspapers in the last year here - but in 1958 they didn't have special people to spin the news like they do now. You get the top two men in Government coming out of rooms, obviously after a set to with fixed grins on their face and saying something like "We have had a frank discussion and are in complete agreement" - that sentence is never finished but would continue "in complete agreement that we loath each other"

In "No Love For Johnnie" the combatants were the likes of Stanley Holloway, Geoffrey Keen, Donald Pleasance, Peters Sallis and Barkworth and leading the field by a nose, Peter Finch. Everyone well played and instantly disliked by myself. Two characters only come out with the viewers sympathy, Flagg,(Dennis Price) not in the original book and Mary (a young Billie Whitelaw) who was obviously perfect for the Peter Finch character but he only saw her as a possible sexual conquest. The man was a fool.

It is also a wonderful bookend to Finch's later USA film "Network", where he goes into that famous rant on live TV against the likes of the character he played in this earlier film.

Despite this sterling cast - like the book it is based on it has been marginalised and is fast losing it mentions in film references books.Check Variety, Time Out. Hats off to Halliwell - it still lists it. For his loathsome performance, Finch won a BAFTA and a Berlin Silver Bear. A lost treasure of a film but now dug up by me and buffed up a bit.

So owners of this film - can I request you re-release it now! The reason I think it was buried in the first place is redundant now - check the title of this text. The book was the incendiary device - the film interpretation defused the bomb. Only Sikes/Sykes of the Earnley Herald remains.

The "No Love For Johnnie" book's blurb screamed "The Novel That Lifts The Lid Off Westminster". It is said REAL Members of Parliament sat around muttering darkly about who it was about - why do MPs always think it is about them? Oh yes - self serving. A question not then answered - perhaps because the author had unfortunately died before even his book was accepted and published, let alone a filmic version.

So the makers of the film version, sort of lifted the lid at Westminster, had a wee peek inside, didn't like what they saw and retreated a respectful distance. Shame really. It was still a shocking film albeit it diluted.

So fair do's - let the whole world see how New Politics was only Old Politics and evermore will be so.

No Love For Johnnie, I'm guessing did not have much of a release in the USA back when it was first made. Only political science students might grasped the significance of many of the happenings in this film. Of course that was before the BBC sent over its programs on our Public Network and we got a more humorous look at the UK's political system in Yes, Minister.

Peter Finch got one of his best screen roles in No Love For Johnnie as Johnnie Byrne recently re-elected Labour member of Parliament. He's got ambitions and he'll do whatever it takes to succeed, to get to the front benches where the Labour ministers sit when they're in power.

It's a tribute to Finch's talent as a player that he keeps so thoroughly dislikeable a person as Johnnie Byrne interested. He's got a wife, he's estranged from and a mistress he's cheating on also with yet another woman. The women in Finch's life respectively are Rosalie Crutchley, Billie Whitelaw and Mary Peach.

There's nothing he won't do, my favorite part of the film is when fellow back bench Labour ministers attempt a little palace coup against their Prime Minister, such people as Mervyn Johns and Donald Pleasance are involved. They have a script ready to follow and it's with Finch taking the lead. When the play is ready to commence, Finch is nowhere to be found, he's with Mary Peach delivering some constituent service. In fact their scenes, tame as they are today, would never have been in an American film of that era.

Actually Pleasance is also a really ruthless character himself, but apparently really dumb as well. I can't believe that what he was trying to do so totally depended on Finch in Parliament. I mean he couldn't have started the back bench revolt against Prime Minister Geoffrey Keen by improvising someone else to ask the pertinent questions. He gets back at Finch by raising some row with Finch's district constituents, that they almost give him a no confidence vote at a Labour Party district meeting. Imagine if we could do that here.

Stanley Holloway is another Labour minister, an older one who remembers Finch's parents who were right at the beginning of the founding of the Labour Party. He serves as the voice of integrity in the film. He alludes to some things that an American audience might not be aware of like the split during World War I which nearly wrecked the Labour Party during it's adolescence. An element of the party that Holloway apparently belonged to opposed British entry into World War I on pacifist grounds and some in fact did go to jail as conscientious objectors. One of those people who was a conscientious objector was James Ramsay MacDonald, Labour's first prime minister. Others in the Labour Party like Arthur Henderson joined the Coalition government to support the war.

Whether you believed what a MacDonald or apparently Finch's parents did was right isn't really the point. What Holloway says is that back in the day people had real beliefs and acted on them. Finch's lack of commitment to anything other than his ambition is the worst thing about his character. Sounds like a lot of people I know today.

Finch got a BAFTA award which is the UK's equivalent of the Oscar for Best Actor. The film in its searing cynicism is years ahead of its time. I suggest it could be remade today and find a much wider audience than it did in 1961.