Saturday Night Out

Think of Godard, Rivette and Varda, all taking the camera into the streets and making masterpieces, and then look at how the English did the same and made a formless mess like this. Without style it shows the vulgarity of London in the early 1960's and its clubs, drunk people and violence. Heather Sears after being in ' Room at the Top ' is watchable, and so was Colin Campbell. Both of them could act, but the rest are stereotypes with hopeless dialogue, badly constructed scenes and confusion of motivation. Basically a hotchpotch of ' stories ' it does not convince, and I give it a two for those actors coping with terrible direction. Oh, I forgot the premise of the film; sailors on leave and this is no ' On the Town. '

The British films of the swinging sixties are typified for their crashing through the art barriers and doing things that had never been done before. Sometimes it came off; sometimes - well, all too often, to be exact - it didn't. Compare this with the "straight films" of the 1950s. Between these two phases of British cinema, there were a "special years" transitory phase: the straightness of the past was laid side by side with the oncoming weirdness of the swinging sixties. This is such a film.

The film follows the adventures of some merchant seamen on a London night out, before they return to their ship in the morning. There are some memorable scenes in this film. These include the "boyfriend" who is in a meditative trance, the know-all sailor getting his comeuppance, when he gets ripped off in a clip joint, and Bernard Lee voluntarily writing a cheque for ten pounds after a failed blackmail attempt. All this, and The Searchers playing in a pub, too.

It is a typical British B movie of the period, and is quite watchable.

Seven sailors in London have an evening out before they have to return to ship.

It's an example of the 'Swinging London' genre of film, which means a diversity of exploits, from David Lodge, who spends the evening in with an old girl friend, to Bernard Lee, who thinks he's struck gold, to John Bonney and Coiln Campbell, who find love and frustration. There's a lot of seaminess to this movie, which turns out to be essentially normative and no worse than PG-12 by modern standards.

Liverpool band The Searchers play one number in a night club. The producers got the Beatles for the gig, but decided they didn't want to pay the train fare.

There is no mistaking which decade this film was made in.It is clearly London and the swinging sixties.Mind you it is difficult to believe that this was 50 years ago and got an X certificate.Nowdays more like PG.The film has a very catchy title number which has stayed with me all the years since I first saw the film.The film is one of the portmanteau type,covering the adventures of 5 merchant seamen on leave.Some stories better than others.Bernard Lee in a rather different part,played partly for comic effect is quite good.The sailor going to the clip joint is quite interesting as it features one of the last performances of former boxer \Freddie \mills before he died in unexplained circumstances.The love story with the Australian sailor and the one with the electrician who spends the night alone in a room with a girl he has picked up and sleeps in a chair,are less satisfactory.This film captures London's Dockland in its last throes before it was transformed into offices and homes.In one instance they refer to a bomb site and this is nearly 20 years after the end of the war.

Although strictly a 'quota quickie', this British picture is lively and passably entertaining in it's episodic telling of the adventures of five sailor's spending a night in London. The two youngest go looking for girls but only find prostitutes ( discussed in a surprisingly frank manner) although photogenic Francesca Annis and naive Colin Campbell do find common ground. David Lodge heads for bed with floozy Margaret Nolan ( a popular glamor model of the time--she was also in 'Goldfinger') for a saucily comic diversion. Bernard Lee takes the acting honors as a quiet, mature gentleman who is almost caught in a badger game. Add to this an appearance by Merseybeat group, The Searchers, and you do have a fairly peppy Saturday Night Out!