Quadrophenia

A young man joins the British mod movement and gains a feeling of belonging and importance, but this makes him even more disenfranchised from his boring 9 to 5 life.

Britain's answer to Rebel Without A Cause is based around a fair-to-middling Who concept album (they financed the movie too) and was made on a modest budget, but has far too much going for it to be ignored. Especially if you are working class and come from the UK.

(How it is viewed elsewhere is beyond my telling, but reading reviews on this site I get the impression that people from all over the world can relate to its central themes - even if the locations and accents are alien.)

Director Franc Roddam was smart enough to cast a young Phil Daniels in the central role of Jimmy. Daniels is a good actor, but he is neither smooth or particularly good looking. This prevents him being accused of glamorising some of the things that he gets up to.

Jimmy is, indeed, also a bit naive. He has a boring job in the post room of an advertising agency (note the satire about pushing smoking - this is the "no health warning" 60's!) and rides around on a scooter with lots of lights on the front.

Life, for him, is about getting through the day and partying at night/weekends to the hip sounds of the day - the non-Who soundtrack album is a taster to mid 60's Brit Pop.

(His parents don't understand him either - but this could be taken as read in this style of movie!)

As most of us know, and a few even tell Jimmy in the movie proper: Life cannot be all parties, cheap thrills and gang fights, but he doesn't seem to want to listen. He is one of the world's great "there must be more to life than this" merchants - in this he is right, but you need to be brighter, better educated or better looking to have it.

There is a good cast of British new wavers on show here: Leslie Ash plays Jimmy's love interest and Sting gets to be the "Ace Face" - the good looking top dog mod that Jimmy wants to be. The home truth about this character leaves Jimmy even more exposed.

Quadrophenia is one of the greatest films about being a teenager ever made and thank god we have video cassettes, DVDs and cable/sat TV so people can actually see it. A low budget classic that deserves to seen at least once by all film buffs and several times if it reflects your life in any way.

Quadrophenia (1979)

*** (out of 4)

The Who's 1973 rock opera was turned into a feature film and centers on Jimmy (Phil Daniels), a teenager in the U.K. who deals with a wide range of issues but most of them surrounding growing up in the era. QUADROPHENIA, the album, is considered one of the band's greatest as well as one of the greatest ever made. I never was a big fan of the film TOMMY but I found this one here to be much better overall. I think the greatest thing going for this film is the soundtrack, which not only includes The Who songs from this album but we also get some of their older material (a memorable bit on My Generation) as well as songs from other artists. This soundtracks is certainly something terrific and The Who songs are put to good use here. Another thing working well is the performance of Daniels who perfectly nails this troubled character. I thought he was extremely believable from the start to the finish as he perfectly nailed the various emotions that this teenager is going through. I thought he was especially good towards the end once the guy starts to finally have a breakdown. Leslie Ash is also very cute and charming in her supporting bit. Director Franc Roddam doesn't add too much style to the picture but I found this to be a good thing. What the director does a great job with is the rawness of the picture. It almost feels as if you're watching a documentary on a real group of people because the look and feel of the picture are so on the mark.

From the creator of Masterchef, here is something Franc Roddam made earlier.

A film about being young in the 1960s, being part of the Mod subculture and alienation and angst with some good tunes. There are a lot of future cast members of Eastenders and The Bill.

Phil Daniels gives a career defining performance that should had got an Oscar nomination as Jimmy who has a mundane job, boring home life with parents who do not understand him. Jimmy lives for the weekend clubbing with friends, popping pills and getting into scrapes with his mates.

Jimmy and his friends go off to a bank holiday weekend in Brighton, he wants to get close with girlfriend Steph (Lesley Ash.) He is in awe of cool dude Ace Face (Sting) and gets in a rumble with Greasers.

However Jimmy gets more disillusioned losing his job, friends and family. Seeing Ace face as just an ordinary bell boy sends him to the edge.

The film quickly became a cult classic, This Who produced film led to the revival of the late 1970s & early 1980s mod scene.

It has some cool tracks, a lot of humour, earthy language and a cast of now familiar actors. In a sense it's like a British version of Saturday Night Fever.

Director Franc Roddam gives this drama a sense of rawness and some vitality when you see the action scenes in Brighton.

QUADROPHENIA is a cult classic movie that explores the life and loves of a Mod living in Britain in the 1960s. The lead character is played by Phil Daniels, a familiar face from British television, and he gives an exemplary performance as an awkward but likable youth struggling to grow up and make it in the adult world.

Produced by The Who, QUADROPHENIA offers as its backdrop a portrait of 1960s era Brighton and the like, where battles between the Mods and Rockers are just around the corner and a great soundtrack generally accompanies the action. I'll be the first to admit I'm not a huge fan of this era - I missed it by a long shot - but this likable drama paints a solid picture of the times.

It's also remarkable as a "before they were famous" movie, featuring performances from the likes of Ray Winstone, Timothy Spall, Leslie Ash, Phil Davis, Michael Elphick, even Sting before they hit the big time. Barely a minute or two goes by without a familiar face, and it's fair to say that everyone is putting plenty of effort into their performances. It's this level of enthusiasm all round which has led to QUADROPHENIA's well-deserved cult status.

A feast of future C-list celebs and also rans remind us why Punk was so vital in resuscitating the corpse of British music and why that cadaver needs more help than ever today; Quadrophenia demonstrates the absolute misery created by the fascist regime, that left the youths of the day with no future, with little to look forward to once they'd outgrown their primitive street gang days, and an underground movement that left them in a bit of a Jam.

Ultimately a culture destroyed by technology, as the Vespa riders, and just about all alternative identifiers of the day have chosen to play in the abstract digital world. A forgotten adolescent mainstream dispersed and scattered to the margins like so many other traditions and cultures of yesteryear. A classic British film - bring on the Bank Holiday!