Sparrows Can't Sing

Wonderful British kitchen-sink comedy/drama from Joan Littlewood. Wonderful, beautiful Barbara playing the titular Maggie makes this film a true delight and a snapshot of the East End in the early 60s. Was it really like this? Who cares. A thoroughly enjoyable and repeatable watch.

Quite simply good or bad its a time capsule of once upon a time in London and great English Actors.

Derived from her own Stratford East stage show, this Joan Littlewood film apparently did no better than its non celluloid counterpart. Now it appears fresh, confident and so evocative but I have never seen it before and like many, I suppose, wouldn't have been the slightest bit interested at age 16 in 1963 with the Beatles and all that was to follow. Seen now, however, with all that location shooting and streets that are gone depicted so well. And what irony! The fabulous extended opening shows our hero/villain returning from sea to find his wife and cannot even find his house. Bulldozed slums, replaced by brand new 18 storey blocks of flats and even they bulldozed in turn in 2000. Back to the film and it is non stop believable banter and jesting. The film does not let up once and only in the final splendid sequence in the pub do we see a trace of the theatrical origins. For anyone who has ever visited or lived in London, absolutely essential. For every one else, well worth seeing to get just a glimpse of the old East End and just an inkling of what it really was once like when everybody seemed to know almost everyone else.

Well it all starts rather inauspiciously with Barbara Windsor singing the Lionel Bart penned title song. Good? Well, no - not very. Thereafter we discover that she ("Maggie") used to be married to "Charlie" (James Booth) who has just returned from being at sea. Thing is, their marital house has been demolished and she has moved on to a new life with bus driver "Bert" (George Sewell) and he is determined to get her back. The whole thing has a made for television look to it and though there is a formidable array of British comic acting talent on display, I found the writing to be really weak with the limitations of Miss Windsor as an actress being writ large as she really struggles to carry this (very lightly) comedic enterprise - riddled with innuendo and stereotype - for ninety minutes. It perhaps doesn't help that the narrative centres around life in a fairly pedestrian East End (of London) community and that after a short while there are so many suds you could run a Chinese laundry for a fortnight. It may well have resonated better in 1963 when it offered a plausible depiction of life in a small, tightly knit, community within a big city, but I am afraid now it has lost what potency it had. Cinema nostalgia it probably is if Cockney is your natural dialect. For the rest of us, it's just all rather dull.

"Awful stuff, Painful to sit through" - I agree. This has nothing to make it worth watching other than a few period details, such as the prices on the fruit and veg stall, the the outside lavatory (Roy Kinnear uses it) and the streets, although people of a certain generation who enjoyed "On The Buses", "Man About The House" and George & Mildred" might like seeing the early work of the actors who appeared in those television series.