August 29, 2008

7:00 pm

free
details here: http://www.loc.gov/rr/mopic/pickford/pickford-current.html

Rock Around the Clock (Clover Productions/Columbia, 1956). Dir. Fred F. Sears. Wrt Robert E. Kent, James B. Gordon. With Bill Haley and His Comets, Johnny Johnston, Alix Talton, Lisa Gaye, John Archer, Henry Slate and Earl Barton. (72 min, b&w, 35mm)

with:

That’ll Be the Day (Goodtimes Enterprises/Anglo-EMI, U.K., 1973). Dir Claude Whatham. Wrt Ray Connolly. With David Essex, Ringo Starr, Rosemary Leach, James Booth, Billy Fury, Keith Moon, Rosalind Ayres. (90 min, Technicolor, 35mm)

Rock Around the Clock was the first of numerous low-budget features produced by Sam Katzman to cash in on the sudden popularity of rock and roll. Cheapness is a virtue here though, as there’s little plot to get in the way of the music, and the unchoreographed dancing extras respond to rock and roll as though they really enjoy it! The film is said to have caused several spontaneous riots in British theatres when it was released there. UK teenagers had heard rock and roll, a bit, but the actual sight of it was apparently overpowering. Bill Haley and the Comets followed up with several English tours, becoming a vital part of the British rock and roll story.

The same year that George Lucas mythologized the end of the first rock and roll era in American Graffitti. British audiences got That’ll Be the Day , a gritty take on the same period in their own history. David Essex plays Jim MacLaine, a directionless young man adrift in late 1950’s England, to whom little besides rock and roll makes any sense. Ringo Starr gives his best film performance as an aging teddy boy and carny making his way with Jim through the cheap flash of the holiday resorts where they work, to the accompaniment of a fabulous rock and roll soundtrack. (MB)

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