Rent Quadrophenia (1979)

A Superb Classic Film set in West London 1964 and Brighton when the West Pier was still there - Quadrophenia review by PV

This is classic stuff. A 1979 film that is all the better for it.

You KNOW it's gonna be great when the woke TV announcer before it shows reads a massive trigger warning before it for all the oversensitive prissy prim po-faced wokiedokie snowflakes out there. Warnings of sex, violence, drug-taking and YAWN the usual 'contains discriminatory language which may be offensive'. WE:LL YES but in 1964 when London was majority white British, working class white kids spoke like that! And those words were DESCRIPTIVE not racist in intention, which no woke puritan even mentions.

3 writers wrote it - NOT The Who. A good move. The story thus has structure, plot points, acts, momentum, a story.

WHAT A CAST! The weakest link is Sting who is TOO OLD at 28. Toyah does her usual JUBILEE lisping totty act.

Timothy Spall here too as a dim card-playing projectionist at the ad agency. MANY more class character actors. Ray Winstone listed as RAYMOND here -his lead role in SCUM of 1979 made his name, and the great SEXY BEAST and more followed. Gary Shail, Mark Wingett, all familiar faces from TV drama since the 80s. Also an uncredited John Altman later Nick Cotton, Dot's son, back on Eastenders back when it was good. Trevor Laird playes the Jamaican drug dealer black character.

The new music is not the Who's best BUT what redeems this is how the film uses music of 1964 incl the Who's own on a TV show Ready Steady Go (The BBC deleted and taped over most of their Top of the Pops shows, to save money, to pay for chauffeurs for the senior managers...).

The late great Michael Elphick perfectly cast as is the actress who plays his wife Kate Williams.

Yes, people did actually live like this and London was like this, majority white working class and unwoke. White privilege? My foot! Meanwhile, these days in Goldhawk Road...

Nostalgia for many. Sad too.

A GREAT British film.