You get much more of a flavour of what this documentary is about from its sub title: “Remembering Leicester’s 1960s Creative Scene.” And as an adopted son of the city I confess to wallowing just a little in the obvious pride on display from the contributors to Joe Nixon’s nostalgic ode. He was the creative force behind the film, having discovered audio tapes dictated by his recently deceased father “Jelly” before sharing them with Leicester University’s Oral History Unit. The tapes help paint a picture of a comparatively prosperous and vibrant post war city, where jobs were plentiful, social restrictions just beginning to loosen, and the creative arts emerging as an avenue to explore alternative life paths. At least this was true if you were young, white and male. Black and female voices were much less well represented here. Joe Orton’s younger sister Leonie explained that for poor working class girls like her, the world still held little beyond soul crushing factory work at Pex or Corah’s, followed, by marriage, children and a family home, if you were lucky. The documentary itself was conventional. It was anchored by a voice-over from Joe, who (in contrast to his father) had an unfortunately dull delivery. There were extracts from the tapes themselves, a parade of talking heads, archive footage and occasional glimpses of the various featured artists and their work in contemporary settings. It was obviously assembled with great deal of love and care but for me there were a couple of weakness, which I hope might get addressed if a “Part 2” (which was hinted at) ever sees the light of day. First the film was heavily front loaded towards the creative scene at the beginning of the decade. As I didn’t arrive until 1968 this was a bit of a two edged sword. On the one hand there was much that was new to me about the extent and influence of Mod and Ska cultures. And I confess to being both surprised and fascinated by the richness and diversity of many of these revelations. But they had peaked by the the time of the flowering of the counter culture and I guess much of the enjoyment of films like this, flow from your own own personal connection to events and movements. In this respect material covering the folk scene and psychedelia was painfully thin. In fact most non performance art was underrepresented and there was almost no reference to experimental art, painting, sculpture or poetry. Second the narrative around the physical reshaping of the city came across as simplistic or naive. I was glad to see aspects of Urban Design and architecture covered, but there was a rather breathy enthusiasm for brutalist projects like the Lee Circle Multi Storey car park with “the largest Tesco outside London” which ignored the damage caused to the fabric of the city and the cost in terms of displacement or severance to established communities. In many ways the 60s were destructive rather than creative and historic culture was often under threat from insensitive projects like these. The never-to-be-completed Inner Ring Road and soulless office tower block like New Walk and Thames Tower did extraordinary damage to the fine grain of Leicester’s street scene and its historic legacy and that’s before you address the impact of the motor car. Praising the first drive tho bank as a national achievement now seems fundamentally tone deaf. In fact it was grandiose master planning like Conrad Smigelski’s (Leicester’s first City Planning Officer) infamous Monorail which led to such a backlash in the 1970s and a much more sensitive approach to urban redevelopment, which I spent much of my professional life trying to implement. But let’s not get too churlish, because as a celebration of largely working class achievements this was a triumph, winkling out lots of examples which have sailed completely under the radar as well as acknowledging the success stories like Stephane Raynor whose BOY fashion brand seemed to get everywhere by the 1980s. Photographer Jack English and playwright Carole Leeming provided particularly authoritative and insightful commentary . There were lots of juicy anecdotes about long forgotten venues like Il Rondo on Silver Street, where The Jimi Hendrick’s Experience were denied a gig in 1965 because the management decided they weren’t worth the £185 appearance fee! But it true show business fashion the film kept its main powder dry for a big finish with the story of the band Family and their short lived but stellar success in the album charts with “Music from a DollsHouse” and “Family Entertainment”. The interview with frontman Roger Chapman was by turns playful, painful and splendidly down to earth. But it was the live fast die young tragedy of their own creative genius Ric Gretch, who crashed the band in order to join Super Group Blind Faith with Eric Clapton, Stevie Windwood and Ginger Baker, that provided the sombre counterweight to the broadly upbeat tone of the rest of the film. Finally just to say I’ll never be able to walk past the Scraptoft Working Men’s Club again without hearing echoes of Englebert Humpadink’s “Please Release Me Let Me Go” or visit the Sue Townsend Theatre without thinking how much she liked a bag of aniseed balls. (This courtesy of my Neighbour Anne – aged 86 – who served her father every Friday teatime at the sweet shop on the corner of Cank Street.
Rating. 16/20
Viewed. 22/5/2024
Screen 1 (F10)
Phoenix Films 2024 