Privilege
Directed by Peter Watkins
Written by Norman Bogner, Johnny Speight and Peter Watkins
1967/UK
IMDb link
First viewing/Netflix rental
[box] Rev. Jeremy Tate: This black card will be issued to you as you leave the Stadium tonight. On it there are three words.They are simple words but they are vital words. They are words which we must now, all of us, begin using because, since the end of the War, we in Britain have become apathetic, slack, loose in our morality. National cohesion has become unimportant to us! We must fight this. We must. Now, all of us begin to use the words on the card! “We will conform.”[/box]
Innovative directing cannot save terrible acting and a ponderous tone.
It is some time in the near future, as of 1967. The British Government controls the population through its idolization of pop singer Steven Strayer (Paul Jones). First, an ultra-violent act releases societal tensions. Then, the government decides it would prefer a nationalistic mass religious conversion. Jean Shrimpton plays an artist who tries to set Strayer straight.
I thought both Jones and Shrimpton were zombie-like, despite their fake emotional outbursts. The plot plays out like an ersatz “1984”. The music is OK. Other people appear to like this way more than I did.
