Bronco Bullfrog

Currently an offering on Criterion (8/2024). Recent restoration actually produced a rather beautiful piece of film. Non-actors working from a non-script seems to somehow capture the times better than if it had been a carefully crafted story. Almost cinema-virite, almost documentary style most like a collection of home movies from 1970. Or better yet what the world (East end London) would have looked like with YouTube and camera phones in 1970. Seems like something that should be taught in film school which is saying something about a film rescued from a dumpster/bin. This ain't Hollywood and this ain't got no happy ending but that isn't what film is all about.

It´s a social realistic film. We follow some kids in the late teens, some in school and some at work. There is not really a story or the story isn't that important. Boy meets girl meets no acceptance from home so they run away. They team up with Bronco Bullfrog who has escaped from borstal. The best thing about the film is that we can follow normal working class kids in East End in London during the era of the Skinheads. So we get a non political view from skinheads, even if you may call them Suedeheads or whatever subcategory you like. There is no actors in the film, everybody is handpicked from the streets. The "bad" acting helps the real feeling. But you could always asked more from the director regarding the tightness of the film. I rated it 7 of 10.

Given that the people behind the camera would have been trained in their skills why should this not apply to the actors I front of the camera.There is really no story and the dialogue is terse.This though does not prevent long scenes with little pace or purpose..All in all a pointless exercise

Proof if it were needed that not everything was bright and shiny for everyone in those infamous 'swinging sixties'. Here a largely improvised series of incidents is filmed on location in Stratford and Greenwich. The second half with the girlfriend and vague plans to leave home is more successful that the first mainly centred around a robbery at a goods marshalling yard but the whole has a likeable enough rolling gait to it that feels authentic enough. Ironic of course that the lack of acting ability tends to give the impression of inauthenticity. Fortunately the essential good nature of the participants and the reliance on location shooting ensures that this is far more interesting than it might have been had it been over rehearsed and shot in a studio. Lots of fabulous shots of a less than fabulous Stratford of the time and now almost all replaced. Most of the war torn and.prefab strewn streets were soon to be built on and more recently the Olympic Park would smooth out and gentrify much of the rest. The short sequence at the end of the film is particularly interesting showing the Greenwich foot tunnel and the riverside power station. Both are still in use but the ships seen alongside and the working docks beyond are long gone. Not the finest film in the world but a valuable document of late sixties east London and pleasant enough watch.

It was interesting to see this long-forgotten independent English feature, which was barely seen when it came out. But the kind of over-excitement that tends to pronounce any "rediscovered" film some kind of classic would really be wrong-headed in this case. The main problem is that while it's understandable to want to cast nonprofessionals in order to get a more "realistic" ambiance in this kind of drama, you still have to give them SOME kind of basic training so they don't look like deer before headlights in front of the camera, just reciting their lines and holding themselves stiffly as if for a still photo. And that's exactly what happens here.

The adults playing parents are OK, but the juveniles are stilted, and the two who were deemed good-looking enough to be leads are so wooden we feel nothing for them. Eventually the barely-there plot hinges on their running away to have some alone time (since both their single parents are hostile towards their being together), and I guess we're meant to root for Young Love, but these two can't express anything--whether love, lust, or just some basic intelligence.

The only real point of interest is the location shooting, and glimpsing a side of (East) London that obviously never got the least "Swinging." There's also a decent enough rock soundtrack. But whether we're focused on the mildly criminal doings of the first half or the runaway couple of the second, there's no narrative tension, and the actors are stiff as boards. A 5 is actually a very generous rating in terms of any entertainment or dramatic value, but I boosted it up from a 4 just for the sake of it providing a time capsule.