Audience Member
Peter Watkins melds his faux documentary style (featured in The War Game, 1965, which shows Britain after a nuclear attack) with a more traditional narrative approach in this "near future" look at manipulation of the masses. Presciently, it is a pop star who is used, first, to encourage youth to release their violent impulses through music appreciation rather than protest, and secondly, to get them to embrace nationalism and religion - that is, a group of business leaders see the pop star as a way to set up a fascist government (coalition of tory and labor parties, as a matter of fact). Only artist Jean Shrimpton sees through everything and convinces the wan Paul Jones (from Manfred Mann) to rebel against his minders. A lot of good provocative ideas here but things drag a bit. I wondered too whether such centralized manipulation is even possible in this new age of social media and a thousand independent voices (but, yeah, they could just shut down the internet and be done with it, I guess).
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
02/04/23
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Audience Member
More interesting than anything. You'll be glad you saw it and still not really like it very much. WILD IN THE STREETS is the better choice.
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
02/04/23
Full Review
Audience Member
(Slightly spoilerish, though I didn't give away the ending)
Good premise,flawed execution.
The plot outline:
Steven Shorter (played by Paul Jones, lead singer of Manfred Mann) is a pop star, and the most famous person in the world. The film opens with him first recording a promo message to his fans, then, as we are informed by the narrator, receiving the first ticker-tape welcoming parade in England, as he returns there after a American tour. We then see his stage act, "based on a sentence he served in prison", which consists of a group of bobbies thrusting him into a cage on the middle of the stage floor, then beating him with clubs inside the cage as he sings a rather long tune imploring to be set free (good thing for the audience that it was long, though, as it's the only song he sings in the whole show, lasting about 10 minutes), while the almost-entirely female audience screams and cries. Towards the end of the song, he is released from the cage, and a girl from the audience is lowered on the stage, provoking the rest of the audience to rush the stage and attack the bobbies who were mistreating their beloved Steve (or maybe they were just mad about buying tickets for a 10-minute-long gig? :) ), which leads up to the best quote of the film:
"There is now a coalition government in Britian, which has recently asked all entertainment agencies to usefully divert the violence of youth. Keep them happy, off the streets, and out of politics."
We spend about another 15 minutes being introduced to all the other characters in the film, which should have been done in a different way, as the narration of "This is ____, Steven Shorter's manager,producer,ect. " gets old quickly. The main other characters are his two managers, who manipulate and dominate Steve to the verge of a nervous breakdown, and Vanessa Ritche (played by fashion model Jean Shrimpton), the artist commissioned to paint his picture, who tries to help him out of the maze of corruption he is entangled in.
Steven Shorter is big business- he has his own chain of discotheques and grocery stores, and when the nation's apple crop is too numerous, he is commissioned to do a commercial stating that everyone should eat 6 apples a day. Finally, his managers decide that he has "reached commercial saturation point", and decide to do something more ambitious- use him to sell not groceries, but religion.
They re-record some hymns with a rock'n'roll beat, and finally have a rally in which the new Steve will be revealed. It's set up in a sufficiently creepy way, with aged bishops carrying burning crosses,and it becomes apparent that Steven is the religion they are trying to sell. They want to make him the new Messiah (think the Who watched this film?); the introductory speech states that "Steven's new song may have auto-suggestive qualities to it from which the sick may derive some internal benefit" and invalids are brought before him to be healed.
Another bishop holds up a card reading "We Will Conform",urging the spectators to make it their motto- good dystopian stuff here.
After the rally, Steve desperately wants to find a way out, but is it too late?
Privilege is a dystopian film, told in a documentary style, which has its good and bad points- but the narration style is often difficult to take seriously, since it bears a striking resemblance to a Monty Python sketch. It's slightly pretentious, and Paul Jones, though a good singer, is a terrible actor.I've heard claims that that's on purpose, but not having seen any of his other films (he did quit Manfred Mann to become an actor, after all), I can't say if the other performances are better than this one or not. It's a film that grows on you. The film has some very good ideas and points, moments that (almost) make up for the hokeyness of the way it's done, and if you can hear the posh voice without expecting a Python joke, and don't mind some of the moments where it drags a bit, it's worth a watch.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
02/16/23
Full Review
Audience Member
One of the best fins you have never seen before. I can only imagine that due to its controversial approach to popular culture it has been swept under the rug. However it is truly frightening how accurate the message of this film is about our current idolisation of the celebrity. Also fantastic performances from both Jean Shrimpton and Paul Jones, both can act and do a great job as two passive young people searching for individual identity. "WE WILL CONFORM" Long live Stephan Shorter!
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
02/13/23
Full Review
walter m
Made in 1967, "Privilege" at first seems to be little more than just a reaction against Beatlemania as it starts with a ticker tape parade for rock star Steven Shorter(Paul Jones) in his home town of Birmingham, England.(If Jones' performance appears to be affectless, it might be on purpose, as the general idea here is to make Shorter look like he is undeserving of all the attention.) That is before a conceptual on-stage performance that puts his mainly female audience in hysterics, with a few looking like they are on the verge of an orgasm.
But even at this early stage in his career, director Peter Watkins has bigger fish to fry than just celebrity with this thought-provoking, intelligent and powerful movie that is also the most creatively filmed of his docufictions. Set in the near future, this could also be our present, as the film is prescient about many things including music videos(recalling Shorter's performance on stage), the abomination of reality television(you will never be able to watch a promo for 'American Idol' the same way ever again) and Tony Blair's New Labour. In this world of almost one political party, there is conformity across the board, beginning from the top, and eventually laterally applied at the lower levels of society. The powers that be have co-opted and commodified Shorter, and through him, rebellion, so much that Vanessa(Jean Shrimpton), who has been hired to paint his portrait, is the only person not in awe of him. And whereas Ken Russell saw the rock star as god, Watkins sees religion as just another business to corrupt the rock star.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
03/31/23
Full Review
Mike M
Eerie and prescient feature-length examination of the ties between celebrity, commerce and politics, and how the first two might be used to distract the masses from the third... This is one of the outstanding rockstar performances of the period, not least for the self-effacement Jones is required to display: with any look-at-me showbix tics surgically removed by Watkins' direction, the lead has to fall back on a troubled blankness, the quiet anguish that's left Steve Shorter both as placid as a lake, and as pliable as plastic - the character's so well-trained, indeed, that his first genuine act of rebellion can be something as mild as to ask out of turn for hot chocolate. The whole is somewhat stiffer in that 60s Art Film way, rigid with its own ideas, yet fascinating all the same as an artefact that had been disappeared underground until the BFI's recent DVD revival - almost as though suppressed by the powers-that-be. And meanwhile the Gallagher brothers go to take tea at Downing Street, and the whole world goes mental at the news Take That - Take That, for f***'s sake - are to reform, and some new teen idol arrives what seems every five minutes to catch the eye. As the film's final line predicts: "It's going to be a happy year, this year in England in the near-future."
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
01/22/11
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