A las cuatro de la mañana

"Four in the Morning" was one of the key British kitchen-sink movies of the sixties and yet today it is virtually unknown and very little seen. It was basically a 'small' picture, (I first saw it on the bottom half of a double-bill with Peter Watkins' "The War Game", telling two stories, both involving young women, and set in London, (whereas most kitchen-sink films were set in the 'grim' North), unfolding over the course of one night. There is a third story of sorts, a kind of documentary in which the body of a young woman is taken from the Thames. Could this be one of the woman we've met in the other stories? The writer/director was Anthony Simmons who, despite living to the age of 93, had a very short career in cinema, (he moved onto television), and the women in question were Ann Lynn and a young Judi Dench who won a BAFTA as Most Promising Newcomer. It's a sad little film with no respite from the gloom and you wonder what audience Simmons had in mind, (when I first saw it there were only two of us in the cinema), and at times it's more in keeping with something made for television though personally I think it's more redolent of something Antonioni might have done, (there are moments when Ann Lynn is a dead ringer for Monica Vitti). Either way, it certainly didn't deserve its fate and it cries out to be seen.

This movie belongs to the social dramas that emerge in the UK film industry during the early sixties, some kind of Ken Loach before his time. Directors such Lindsay Anderson, Karel Reisz, Tony Richardson, Bryan Forbes, John Schlesinger were the main providers of such movies showing the British way of life for the common people, certainly not the Lords' one. This movie is excellent, the script awesome, acting flawless, and Judi Dench long before her role in 007 films till SKYFALL. So this British drama is brilliant, so smartly edited, built around this corpse found in the river.... It is riveting, never boring despite the many talks.

Three well-acted vignettes of women not being treated particularly well. In the first, there is a woman discovered dead along the Thames and her body is subsequently moved about without a hint of compassion about what happened to her by any of the men that attend to her. In the second, a young mother struggles with her baby while her drunken husband is out making an ass of himself with his silly friend. In the third, a man pursues a woman with the singular objective of having an affair with her. The mood is bleak. The black and white filming, much of it along the Thames, is quite stark and beautiful and appropriate for the movie. The musical score is haunting. But the stories are a downer and certainly do not cast men in a very favorable light.

Very fine UK film, probably now most famous for being John Barry's first film score. At times rather languid, the dialogue is excellent and the performances effective. The London riverside shots are a real bonus as so much of the shoreline has changed so much and the docks all gone. Atmospheric and utterly English complete with a crying baby being given aspirin and drunk husband bringing mate home in the early hours and asking his wife if she fancies joining them for a drink. Although already a stage actress, I believe this was Judi Dench's first film and she does very well in a difficult role. The young would be lovers who take a speedboat for a spin are not so easy to believe in now what with her reluctance to have sex before he says that he loves her, but this was pre pill and exactly right for the time.

This is a film that I felt really belonged on the stage. It centres around a married couple with a baby and a courting couple. The former - Norman Rodway and Judi Dench are unhappy. She is fed up with being stuck at home all the time with their teething child while he continues to live as if he were a bachelor. The latter - Ann Lynn and Brian Phelan are enjoying the mutual discovery process whilst uncertain as to what the future might bring, if anything at all, to their relationship. Meantime, we know that the police have pulled the body of a young woman from the river Thames. Who might she be? Might she be connected with one of our quartet? Now on the plus side, Judi Dench does deliver convincingly as the frustrated woman struggling with early motherhood whilst her man is off galavanting, and there is also a calming John Barry score to help things along. Aside from that and a few scenes of intensity, though, the rest of this rather meanders along showing us people who are neither interesting nor likeable and there is a surfeit of fairly pointless dialogue that presumes, riskily, that the audience might actually care whether they get/stay together or not. That's where the theatre might have helped it. The closed confines of a more rigid stage might have intensified the potency of the messages - for messages there are, but here these are very much of the sexual stereotype fashion that fall into rather than break any moulds in British film-making. It's an almost documentary style observation of their lives that at times breathes vigorously but for the most part it just drags. Sorry.