Dir: Andrei Ujică: with the voices of Shea Grant, Therese Azzara, Tommy McCabe, Sarah McCluskey | Docudrama 86’ | France, Romania
Suffused with the gentle nostalgia of the Swinging Sixties this peach of a movie kicks off in the mid-Atlantic where the pioneering independent station Radio Caroline was born out of a desire to broadcast pop music and did so in an offshore battleship in those pre-internet days.
So begins this glorious look back – not in anger, but in sheer joy – at an era of innocence captures in grainy black & white by Romanian writer/director Andrei Ujică: best known for his documentaries Out of the Present and The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceaucescu (2010)
Amongst other treasures it records the moment in 1965 when The Beatles descended from their plane and onto the tarmac, their iconic BOAC bags tucked under their arms, to give a sold-out concert at New York’s Shea Stadium (at 5.50’USD a ticket), all chewing gum, they disappear into a black limo, Paul not realising the windows are automatic when he tries to respond to a photographer’s question.
Paul McCartney and John Lennon leads the press conference, with a cheeky unpolitically correct comment when asked why the two unmarried bands members are sitting together.: “It’s because we’re queer – but don’t telling anyone”. All totally candid and unmanaged. One journalist described the event as “being in the eye of the storm”.
The Sixties, that wonderful moment in the sun, is like nothing you’ve probably seen before, or since. It was innocent; freewheeling, chilled out and much treasured in my memory. Ujică adds a black sketched figure, superimposed rather like an invisible voyeur, who narrates the story, as he remembers it. We move from Manhattan to Jones Beach. State Park in Wantagh New York where bathers enjoy the balmy weather far away from the horrors of Vietnam.
Switching to Los Angeles police riots involving the ‘Negro’ community are captured on film. They talk about being victims of abuse and police brutality. But then they dance ‘The Twist’ like no one else can. And in upstate New York a teenage girl dresses for the concert while a woozy trumpet plays ‘I Can’t Get Started with You’ as the early hours of that August day dawn. And the girl makes her ways through Holland Tunnel – the world’s first mechanically ventilated underwater vehicular passage. And we arrive in ‘the city’.
A cast of thousands is summoned—each separate sphere, face, and place given equal weight, each instant is meaningful, the excitement mounting as the girls – now painted, superimposed figures – make their make their way through the New York World’s Fair. There’s a haunting, dreamlike, ghostly quality to this reverie that makes us ache for those simple summers back then, with florescent butterflies floating into the air. (delicately rendered by Yann Kebbi). So many friends and family members have vanished but their memories and these images live on and we shed a soulful tear. @MeredithTaylor
VENICE FILM FESTIVAL 2024 | until 7th September 2024