Quadrophenia

Reviews

The Guardian - http://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2011/aug/18/reel-history-quadrophenia-riot

Between 1964 and 1966, teenagers rioted in British seaside towns. Violence flared between mods and rockers, two youth movements that were connected in the press with drug-taking, vandalism and delinquency.

Youth Culture

Jimmy (Phil Daniels), a fictional mod, hangs out in a London dive. Everyone looks about 12; pass round a few splurge guns and you'd be in Bugsy Malone. But this lot are less the adorable moppet sort of gangster and more the sort that takes pills, nicks stuff and smashes other people's faces in. Among the newspaper clippings and pornography on Jimmy's bedroom wall is an article about the 'Battle of Hastings' – not the 1066 one with the Anglo-Saxons and the Normans, but the 1964 one with the mods and the rockers. The film is based on a rock opera by the Who, which it turns into a stealth musical, complete with lavish product placement for the Who's albums. Still, Jimmy's obsession with the band is credible: their hit My Generationbecame the ultimate mod anthem on its release in 1965.

Media

Mod Ace-Face (Sting) is fined £75 by the magistrate. "I'll pay now if you don't mind," drawls Ace-Face, revealing enormous wealth and privilege (£75 in 1965 is equivalent to about £2,700 today, going by average earnings; it was ritzy for a teenager to own a chequebook). This is based on a real trial overseen by Simpson at Margate in which a 17-year-old boy did indeed offer to pay his £75 fine with a cheque. Britain's media were united in their outrage at this new breed of posh-kid rioter, and splashed the story across the front pages. What none of them bothered to report was that, three days later, the boy admitted he had never signed a cheque and did not even have a bank account, let alone £75. Quadrophenia gets slightly closer to the truth: after the verdict, Jimmy's heart is broken when he sees his beloved Ace-Face working as a bellhop at the Grand Hotel, revealing that he's not really a posh kid at all. The fact he's stuck in a lowly job would be bad enough but, even worse, they've made him dress up as a majorette. Poor Sting.

New York Times - http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=EE05E7DF1738A72CA1484CC1B779958C6896

The results of my (highly) informal survey about Quadrophenia have been tabulated. They show that most moviegoers think this is either a concert film or a rock opera, or that the title refers to a quadrophonic soundtrack. Not true. This is a dramatic film, one that's gritty and ragged and sometimes quite beautiful. It happens to incorporate rock songs, and to be saddled with a silly title. Though it's by no means a movie for everyone, Quadrophenia is something very special. It demands—and deserves—some special allowances.
Quadrophenia, which opens today at the Paramount and other theaters, is set in England in 1964, and populated by Mods and Rockers, warring bands of teenagers who speak with such thick accents that American audiences may find their conversation indecipherable. For this and other reasons, the film—which is a hit in England—hasn't traveled well.

But its foreignness has perverse advantages, helping to recast situations that might seem commonplace in an American end-of-adolescence movie, and making them just remote enough to seem fresh. A gifted new director, Franc Roddam, lends the film a clarity of emotion that keeps it from becoming too confusing.

The story is derived very, very loosely from an album by the Who. This album was an ambitious undertaking: it described a teenage boy, Jimmy, who was so acutely sensitive to social pressures that he developed the four-way schizophrenia of the title. Jimmy's condition was illustrated, rather than described, by four separate melodies—one associated with each member of the Who—that eventually merged into one transcendent theme. The specific ending of the album called for Jimmy to swim out to sea and scale an enormous rock. Unfortunately for the current film, which does some floundering at the finale, Ken Russell borrowed that scene for Tommy several years ago.

But Quadrophenia, as directed and cowritten by Mr. Roddam, is perhaps too raw to have culminated with pie-in-the-sky. Jimmy, played by a wonderfully avid-looking actor named Phil Daniels, is a cheerful, unexceptional fellow, by no means the Who's hypersensitive hero. He is seen squabbling with his parents, partying with his Mod friends, working at a mailroom job that's both dead-end and dull. These episodes, which are carried by the boisterous enthusiasm of an excellent cast, combine to form a slice-of-life movie that feels tremendously authentic in its sentiments as well as its details.

The Mods-and-Rockers aspect of the story might seem to date the material. But Mr. Roddam is as concerned with the general experience of adolescence as he is with these particular groups of people. And he is able, in re-creating the seaside riots between these rival gangs, to capture a fierce, dizzying excitement that epitomizes a kind of youthful extreme. Jimmy, who is so electrified by his new identity as a Mod that he makes a quick, thrilling sexual conquest while the fighting is going on, may never again feel so fully at the height of his powers. Quadrophenia fills the moment with equal elements of regret and celebration.

In a barely memorable shot at the beginning of the story, Jimmy is seen to be walking away from a cliff—a cliff from which, at the end of the movie, he appears to jump to his death. This disastrous attempt at a flashback damages the movie, which finally seems to be concerned with nothing more morbid than the end of this boy's flaming youth. The last minutes of the film are further weakened by some last-minute interjections of the Who's music, which has until now figured into the story more delicately.

Images of the group, up until this point, have been ghostly and ubiquitous. Their records play in party scenes; their posters and photographs decorate walls; Jimmy watches the band on television while his parents complain. Jimmy himself looks considerably like the Who's Pete Townshend, and he has the gawkiness that Mr. Townshend has made such memorable use of in the course of his career.

When Jimmy, in one of the film's most stunning set-pieces, dives into a crowd of dancers at a seaside resort, as much to vent his frustration as to attract attention, the spirit resembles that of an early Who concert—the kind that concluded with Mr. Townshend's furiously smashing his guitar.

Among the fine supporting performances in Quadrophenia, on a par with Mr. Daniels's superb Jimmy, is Raymond Winstone's Kevin, an old school friend Jimmy runs into in a public bath. When they put their clothes on, Jimmy realizes that his friend has become a Rocker; later, they share a conversation about how important it is to join the right group so you won't be like everybody else. Leslie Ash is suitably heartbreaking and heartless as the most popular of the female Mods, and the actors playing Jimmy's closest friends are affecting, too. The movie includes a hilarious turn by the Ace, the prettiest and surliest blond Mod, who turns out to be a bellhop on the side. The Ace is played by Sting, who is lead singer of a widely praised new band, the Police.


Telegraph - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/regional-shows/6161650/Quadrophenia-review.html

Director Franc Roddam transformed Townshend’s typically abstruse and tortured piece about a young Mod with a personality disorder in which he "is torn in different directions by four extreme aspects of his ego” into a rites of passage teen-flick complete with battles between Mods and Rockers on the beach at Brighton and serious girlfriend problems. For his pains the picture received one of the most stinging capsule reviews I have ever read.

“What passed for a successful musical at the end of the Seventies is typified by this violent, screaming, wholly unattractive amalgam of noise, violence, sex and profanity", Leslie Halliwell wrote dismissively in his Film Guide.

One shudders to think what dear old LH would make of this stage version were he still alive. Noise, violence, sex and profanity are still very much on the agenda; what’s gone is anything resembling a comprehensible plot or dialogue. Though Jeff Young is credited as the writer, it’s hard to imagine how he spent his time beyond smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee and staring out of the window since barely a line of dialogue is uttered and it is often impossible to follow what’s going on.

Instead Tom Critchley’s turbo-charged production concentrates on vigorous dance and movement, a fine parade of swinging sixties mod fashions, and Townshend’s magnificent score, played at maximum volume and splendidly delivered by a crack band with the four actors who represent Jimmy singing their hearts out in a manner that is almost the equal of the Who’s great vocalist, Roger Daltrey.

With its energy, angst, anger and passion this is Townshend at the top of his considerable game as a composer-lyricist and this highly physical production creates a pill and booze-fuelled trip back to the tempestuous world of adolescence.

It’s a shame that the four aspects of our troubled hero - Jimmy the Romantic, Jimmy the Tough Guy, Jimmy the Lunatic and Jimmy the Hypocrite, described on the album’s original sleeve notes as representing the four different member of the Who, don’t emerge more strongly in performance. And old curmudgeon that I am, I would have welcomed a more coherent narrative, though it is clear that most of Jimmy’s problems emanate from his abusive father.

But it’s the music that matters and such songs as The Real Me, Bell Boy and the show’s superbly stirring leitmotif, Love Reign O’er Me send shivers racing down the spine. For good measure a few of the Who’s greatest pop singles are added to the original album tracks, among them Substitute, I Can’t Explain and the amphetamine stutter of My Generation.

This is that rare thing, a rock musical that really rocks.

Quadrophenia has the authentic tang of teen spirit about it, and if it’s too loud, you’re too old.


Static Mass Emporium - http://staticmass.net/deconstructing-cinema/quadrophenia-movie-1979/

Set against the backdrop of 1964, Quadrophenia is the story of Jimmy the Mod. He’s not just any Mod, he’s THE Mod. Draped in a parka over the top of a fitted suited straddling a Vespa popping ‘blues’ Jimmy (Phil Daniels) sweats, breathes and lives Mod culture. Part of that culture is a vapid hatred for anything ‘Rocker’; as their natural born enemy they inevitably fall into quite a few scrapes throughout the film.

Based on the classic The Who album, it takes us on a journey through these two opposing subcultures all from the perspective of young Jimmy and gives us an insight into what it is to be young and reckless in 1964.

Having seen this film numerous times it’s always struck me as a classic story with, at the time, a very contemporary twist. Focusing on youth and young manhood, there’s a heavy emphasis on how these young Mods and Rockers perceive themselves and everyone around them. Chanting ‘We Are The Mods’ with a militant march is indicative of how they see themselves with specific personas and fluent identities.

Empire - http://www.empireonline.com/reviews/reviewcomplete.asp?fid=2242

Review

An iconic ode to fallen youth of the Mod variety that has picked up a cult following mainly due to its hip imagery, its so-called grasp of the teen identity, and the fact it was based on an album by The Who, granting Pete Townshend a screenplay credit. There are some fine soap-operatics, and the rough-edged depiction of the period, the mid-‘60s with its fraught air of violence, feels pungently real. And Phil Daniels, in a role he has never quite shaken, is strangely charismatic (given he is supposed to represent the ordinary boy) as the scooter riding anti-hero Jimmy.

Director Franc Roddam is caught between stools, he wants to depict an era he knew well, to give a documentary vibe of headiness and rebellion, building up to a Bank Holiday confrontation with the teddy boys heading for Brighton beach. Yet, he is also having to deal with Townshend’s teen-death-dream thing — a mood piece full of stark symbolism and the much-debated significance of the downer ending. It is not a satisfying fit; the film is youthful and vague, gritty and quite weird.

It’s reputation is better founded on the sharp, compelling recreation of the era, and there are some striking performances to go along with Daniel’s tormented Jimmy: Leslie Ash is frail and beautiful as Steph, the girl who will force Jimmy to re-evaluate for the worse; Gary Shail, Philip Davis and Mark Wingnett froth and bubble with all the bloody-mindedness and energy of bad-youth as his Mod buddies; while Sting looks statuesque and icy without having to do much as Ace Face, a Mod fashion-icon, gang leader and Jimmy’s hero. When he, also, proves to have a humble side to the cool sheen, Jimmy starts to see through the whole mystique of this tribal world. It’s a haunting note, growing up is about losing your ideals.


Verdict

Stunning performances, a streetwise script, great pacing and a superb soundtrack make this not only an anthem of the times but an enduring tale to boot.

Brighton Mums - http://www.brightonmums.com/film-review-quadrophenia/

The film tells the story of Jimmy, a mod in ‘60s London clinging to a tribe mentality and living a lifestyle filled with music, sex, violence and pills. As his journey goes on, Jimmy has to come to terms with his place, purpose and identity in life. Disillusionment ultimately sets in– with love, work, family and even what it means to be a mod being called into question.

In one of his earliest roles, Phil Daniels delivers a powerful and memorable leading performance, supported by a young cast including the likes of Mark Wingett, Philip Davies and Lesley Ash. First-time director Franc Roddam delivers a film full of youthful energy, humour, angst and passion, in which it’s difficult not to get swept up. Whilst it attempts to capture the period it is set in, ‘Quadrophenia’ has a look and style all of its own that has become equally iconic. It’s full of memorable and quotable scenes, and the film’s set piece on Brighton Beach (which recreates the legendary bank holiday clash between mods and rockers) provides a perfect point from which the film’s balance hangs.

The music of course, is stunning. The Kingsmen’s ‘Louie Louie’ rubs shoulders with the likes of ‘Be My Baby’ by The Ronettes, classic 60s tracks underpinning much of the film. However, the real musical highlights are the many songs taken from the 1974 Who album on which the film is based. Whilst ‘Quadrophenia’ is not a musical in the conventional sense, songs such as ‘Love Reign O’er Me’, ‘Bell Boy’ and in the film’s dramatic climax ‘I’ve Had Enough’ – the songs are allowed to drive and powerfully take over the narrative, expressively speaking on the characters’ behalf.

That said, ‘Quadrophenia’ is not just a ‘cult’ movie, or a ‘musical’ – it is one of the true classics of British cinema. Transcending genre and age, this is a must-see for anyone who is, or remembers how it feels to be a young adult.