SWINGING LONDON

The famous Times cover of 15 April 1966 - LONDON The Swinging City - was deliberately designed to attract American tourists to where it was all happening. The cover story inside, by Piri Halasz, was already almost a parody of itself:

Ancient elegance and new opulence are all tangled up in a dazzling blur of op and pop. The city is alive with birds (girls) and beatles, buzzing with minicars and telly stars...The guards now change at Buckingham Palace to a Lennon and McCartney tune, and Prince Charles in firmly in the long-hair set...In a decade dominated by youth, London has burst into bloom. It swings; it is the scene."

With articles like that, it was almost unneccesary for Private Eye to produce its own contribution to the 'scene':

Journal of Ye Plague Year Nineteen Hundred and Sixty-Five

A common conclusion was that the chief carriers of the pest appeared to be certain chronicles and journals which, allowed freely into the homes of rich and poor alike, do spread th'infection daily; these being glossy magazines and Coloured Sections. On contact with these vile effulgences, the reader eventually lapses into a kind of wild madness and the delusion that only the present time is of any importance..."

Robert Murphy makes the point that the six films he cites as most typical of the Swinging London films had been made and released before the Time article in April 1966. I've always thought that the Swinging Sixties started, in cinematic terms anyway, with Julie Christie swinging her handbag as she walks the streets of Bradford in Billy Liar. As she catches the train to London (which Billy of course misses, perhaps deliberately) it is as though the whole British cinema movement goes with her.

Blow Up is probably the archetypal Swinging London film in many respects, particularly as it has as its main character a fashion photographer (played by David Hemmings), who seems to lead the sort of life parodied by Harry Enfield in the clip at the bottom of the page:

Richard Lester's film The Knack - and how to get it followed on from his huge success directing A Hard Day's Night, and uses the standard narrative device of 'Northern girl coming down to try her luck in the big city' - in this case Rita Tushingham, playing a more naive and wide-eyed version of Jo from A Taste of Honey, but clearly from the same background. (This same plot device features in many a Swinging London film, for example Jane Asher's character in Alfie, or Rita T herself, with Lynn Redgrave, in the comedy Smashing Time - see below).

The start of the film includes a key stylistic element in many of the films of the period, the fantasy sequence:

It's Lester's directorial box of tricks that situate it now so specifically in a time and place, the story itself being quite conventional.  Along with the fantasy sequence, there is the use of speeded up camera for comic effect which distances it so much from the early 60s films, and the visual imagery that is now so iconic, seen to best effect in this sequence where Colin (Michael Crawford), Tom (Donal Donnelly) and Nancy (Rita Tushingham) transport Colin's new bed back to his house: 

Although it is often cited as a key Swinging London film, Smashing Time is arguably the first parody of the whole film type. Directed by Desmond Davis (not Michael Winner, as I thought, my mistake has just been pointed out to me!) as a slapstick farce it hits most of its (admittedly easy) targets in its tale of two Northen lasses coming down to find their fortune in London (sound familiar?) and finding only hollow false facades.

There is a very telling scene early on, where Michael York's Hemmings-like photographer spots Yvonne (Redgrave) and wants to shoot her; we can see the punchline coming (he wants to feature her in a 'how-not-to-look' piece) although she, blinded by the dazzle of potential publicity, cannot.

Tushingham's Brenda is much more cynical and suspicious, but even so finds herself looking after the trendy boutique Too Much ("its an expression!") where she meets up with her old sparring partner from A Taste of Honey, Murray Melvin:

Meanwhile Yvonne becomes a pop star with the truly appalling 'I'm so Young' single, with the lyrics:

I can't sing but I'm young

Can't do a thing but I'm young

I'm a fool

But I'm cool

Don't put me down!

I think this is still a funny spoof, sadly as relevant today as it was then, if not more so: