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.

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.

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!

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.

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.