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cliveoverlander
Reviews
Scala!!! Or, the Incredibly Strange Rise and Fall of the World's Wildest Cinema and How It Influenced a Mixed-up Generation of Weirdos and Misfits (2023)
Fascinating if flawed documentary
Although I'd heard of the Scala years ago (I'm 69) I'd never been there. Went to the BFI last week to attend the illustrated talk (although the youngest member of the panel - in het very estly 20s- was awful and added nothing. The other three were great and the clips shown (not in the documentary) were eye-opening and amusing bin equal measure. The documentary was well made and the clips, anecdotes and stills were also eye opening. The downside: it seems that towards the end the Scala degenerated to somewhere where the films shown were taking second place to opportunities for "hooking up" in any available area.
Towards thecend of the film the directors blamed the fact that they screened the "banned" A Clockwork Orange for the uktimate closure of the Scala. This is not so. The truth is that the film was NEVER banned. Stanley Kubrick requested that the film be "withdrawn from circulation" in the UK after the furore whipped up by various media outlets and individuals. (It WAS banned in some countries, apparently, but NEVER here by the BBFC, but possibly by local authorities). The Scala was taken to court for Copyright Infringement and, sadly, lost, so there was a lot of money they had to pay out which they obviously couldn't afford. Great doco and I am just putting the record straight. Go see it.
Play for Today: A Hole in Babylon (1979)
I worked on this film
Having been a trainee assistant film editor (in Tony Woolard's cutting room) at the time, I have an alternative view to most of the reviews. Horace, affectionately I believe, called me "Heeb" (I'm Jewish). I made some very small contributions (I have additional lines of voice over dialogue) and aided the dubbing editor Danny Nissim in track-laying. I recently saw the film on TV again, the previous time was a celebration of Play For Today. I found the acting rather poor by nearly all involved especially the "Italians" & T-Bone (Frank). Floella Benjamin & Carmen Munroe were fine in their all too brief single scenes. The film, understandably controversial at the time (and possibly still is) is not great viewing anymore (if it atually ever was) and the recent showing reinforced my view. It is clunky and disjointed and despite what Indra Ové said in her short opinion piece screened before the latest showing of A Holw In Babylon, the original newsreel footage sticks out like a sore thumb. I know why it was used - no budget and used for verisimilitude - but it just doesn't work. They guys were indeed criminals albeit petty ones (and not "criminals" as Indra said using "air quotes"). Yes Frank had been very badly treated in Nigeria and the cultural opression was all to real but the trio's ineptitude and utter incompetence (at least as shown in the film) was all too palpable. All that being said, I enjoyed my time working on the film and I learnt a lot from Tony, Danny and Sir Horace.