No Love for Johnnie

"No Love for Johnnie" is a most unusual movie that doesn't at all go in the directions you expect. I was actually pretty thrilled that repeatedly I was wrong about the film...and I love to be surprised.

When the film begins, Johnnie Byrne (Peter Finch) is told by his cold wife that she doesn't love him and she's leaving. Considering she's been very frigid and their relationship has been rather asexual, this should have come as a relief to Johnnie. However, there's a complication...he's a member of Parliament and his wife leaving might hurt his career. So might it hurt if he starts dating once again. But Jimmie has normal needs...and soon seeks out a girlfriend. What's to come of all this?

This is an interesting slice of life film. If you are expecting anything very dramatic or with a super-satisfying conclusion, look elsewhere. Instead, the film strives for realism and you really do have to feel sorry for him. Well worth seeing.

By the way, at the party scene where Johnnie is kissing a lady, the man counting off how long the kiss is Oliver Reed in one of his very brief early roles.

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!

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.

Johnnie Byrne (Peter Finch) is a British Labor party back bencher whose ambition overrides his principles and ultimately his humanity in Ralph Thomas' political drama No Love for Johnnie. Written by Nicholas Phipps' and Mordecai Richler's from a novel by Wilfred Fienburgh, the film is similar in theme to Room at the Top with its unlikable status-seeking protagonist. Unlike the Laurence Harvey, Simone Signoret classic, however, No Love for Johnnie never found its audience, though Finch's performance won him a BAFTA Award for Best Actor.

Just re-elected to Parliament from the working-class constituency of Earnley, the 42-year-old Byrne is not exactly a charmer, something his wife Alice (Rosalie Crutchley), an active CP member. notes as she decides to leave him. Passed over for a cabinet position by the Labor Prime Minister Reginald Stevens (Geoffrey Keen), Byrne schemes with a more radical faction of the Party to ask embarrassing questions of the Prime Minister during a parliamentary debate but, after some quiet reassurances from Stevens, he decides to skip the Q and A. Notable here are Stanley Holloway, Geoffrey Keen, Donald Pleasence and Mervyn Johns as nondescript British politicians but it is always Finch who dominates the screen.

The plot, however, turns away from jealousy, ambition, and back stabbing long enough to generate a romance. Johnnie's upstairs neighbor, Mary (Billie Whitelaw) invites him to a party where he meets a 20-year-old model, Pauline West (Mary Peach), and begins a close relationship that ultimately becomes too involving for the much younger woman to handle. Spurned by his own Party, given a vote of no-confidence by his constituency, and unsuccessful in his relationships, Byrne's downfall is pitiable, but the striking authenticity of Finch's performance makes him a person we can relate to and even sympathize with. In today's politics, however, where cynicism has become even more prevalent, a politician who puts ambition above principle would hardly warrant such attention.

This film was made in 1961 during Harold MacMillan's premiership and about a year before the Profumo scandal broke.So much of what is shown in the film was reflected in contemporary life.Of course parliamentary scandals would get worse culminating in the expenses fiddle.Peter Finch is excellent.However there are two aspects of the film which don't ring true.Firstly Mary Peach running off back home.Secondly the motion of no confidence.I am sure that this would have been squashed by the head office,as such an unlikely move would cause major embarrassment to a new government.Incidentally the red scare was quite real at the time,as apart from the Profumo scandal a small number of Labour MPs had contacts with iron curtain countries.