Film

Sexy Sixties - Part 4, Chapter 1C - The ‘Dolce Vita’ Effect

Yes, that film. That actor cat. What’s his name? Marcello Mastroianni. Hmm. A bit ruthless, in the film. A bad-guy character, indeed. But – God – he’s smart as hell. Went to the movies three months ago and woke up the morning after with a strange feeling. A feeling that I had to dress, walk, behave and act like Mr. Mastroianni. Sure enough, he’s got that somewhat I was always looking for.

1960. “La Dolce Vita”, the new film of Federico Fellini, divides critics and public from day one, but is about to become both a classic and one of the most influential films ever. The film is formed by various episodes, all connected with the late 50s high-life in Rome.

Marcello Rubini is a journalist, writing gossip features but dreaming his immediate future as a proper writer. Life in the mid-late 50s Rome is made of chances and he’s always there to get them. He’s got to aim high, so he embarks in all those adventures that can shorten the distance between himself and his career. Hiring his photographer friend Paparazzo, to take pics of this blooming jet set, no place in and around Rome is too far for his ambitions.

Despite the producer De Laurentiis’ scepticism – he and Fellini argued about the choice of the main actor – La Dolce Vita earned a lot of money in the first two weeks of screening in Italian cinemas, and the sharp characters Marcello and Paparazzo (the latter eventually becoming a common name for any kind of gossip ruthless photographer) set the ethos and the aesthetics of a brand new young and modern man-about-town.

So, here we go. Marcello. Trying one of them well-tailored Italian suits. I have three of ‘em. Got the first one from a Soho spot, that man in his forties, how’s he called? Mario, I think. I popped there one day and told him “I’d like to look like Mastroianni. Can you make a good suit for me? I mean, the works”. And he went, with his very typical Southern Italy accent: “eh, I do wottya like, young man, but you gotta wait a week, so fulla bizinéss to do, diz days…”

And then, the following week I went there again for fittings. He took him sort of one month, which is not that quick, but – oh boy! What a result. I know my name ain’t Marcello, nor I am a fashionable Italian actor, but this is exactly the way I want to look like.

Can you imagine? Very few films have been so influential to early 60s Mod culture as La Dolce Vita. The very expression “Dolce Vita” became synonymous with “high life” and “jet set” , and eventually went to represent a new style for wool jumpers in Italy – dolcevita = turtleneck.

Sexy Sixties – Chapter 1 Part B 

Those hedonistic Modernists (1959-1961)

The suit is a blue pinstripe model, made by that Italian tailor cat somewhere just behind Charing Cross Road. It looks good. Well, it looks damn right. It has three front pockets, plus one for the hanky, two eight inch side vents and it’s cut like a piece of art. It’s just perfect. Jean Paul Belmondo and Marcello Mastroianni couldn’t have desired anything better than that.

The owner of that suit – and many others – is a seventeen years old boy from Stepney Green. He works, of course, and his job is all about metal sheets to be folded and shaped. Not that it can be called “the best job in the world”, but it’s enough money to make him afford some very good clothes and fuel for his Lambretta Li 150. And some pills, too. “’Cause life’s gotta be brilliant. You have to be brilliant, mate”, he usually answers when someone asks him questions.

Meanwhile, he also invests his wages into the latest jazz imports from the US, exploring all those many microscopic Soho music shops. He spends a lot of his spare time looking at his image in the mirror, and – hey!, he likes a lot what he sees. He meets somewhere in the West End with a few other cats very much into the same music and lifestyle, but he doesn’t consider himself as part of a group. In fact, he’s an individual. He’s a Modernist.

Music and cinema started it all, in the 50s or maybe earlier. American GIs living in UK wanted jazz musicians to play for them. A bunch of sixteen years old boys, bored to death with the too understated, post war-ish national imagery, found themselves tasting a bit of that ‘modern jazz’ thing being imported. And they liked it. In the same time, French and Italian films added new ingredients to the cinema as a form of art, making British films look plain and unexciting, to say the least.

If we add to these two fundamental things a third, no less important one, the mass motorization, with the introduction of brilliantly designed Italian scooters, you should have a complete frame about our boy with the pinstripe suit, or about his attitude and lifestyle. “Being brilliant” as the opposite of “being plain”, “being dull”, “being a post-war number dressed in a boxy, badly cut jacket”. Or, in one word, “being square”.

All of a sudden these hedonistic teenagers didn’t want to be the average English boys anymore, they wanted to be American, French or Italian. And for the first time ever, they had enough money in their pockets to look smart, to buy imported records and to drive a very good looking scooter – a wheeled piece of the most desirable Italian design.

And the boy with the pinstripe suit irons the crease of his trousers to a sharp, razor-like finishing. A light-blue, tab collar shirt is waiting on a hanger, as the ice-white mac, ready to be worn.

“Just stick a good John Coltrane or Wayne Shorter on the record player, before I go. That will give me a kick”. It’s nine o’clock pm, and the night is there, just behind your flat’s door.

The night is yours and it’s full of new sensations.The gathering of a new kind of knights – the Modernists – will take place at the club, all night long.

You only need to read a book, to learn what’s the story. And this book can only be Colin McInnes’ “Absolute Beginners”. It’s all there.

Back in 2004 the New Untouchables commissioned especially for the MODSTOCK event ‘Ready! Steady! Sew!’ a documentary by Boyschild Production’s Sean Wilson, Angie Smith (a living vintage fashion scene legend) and Pip! Pip!. The programme focuses on Modernist fashion through the decades including interviews with important mover and shakers from the origianl 60’s scene. Our very own 21st century fashion gurus Caspar, Peter Jackson and Angie Smith take you on this journey spanning four decades and explain how this magical period in fashion changed the shape of society and still influences the high street today. The film was shown only once in public, live to a standing only audience projected from the top of the Pip! Pip! lightshow Scaffold Tower as part of the Fashion Catwalk section of Modstock. 2 vintage scooters were placed at the front of the stage on the catwalk and Soulof65 owner Sean, Mickey from Velvet Illusion, Angie Smith and an assortment of scene based models helped create a really special fashion happening especially for the event. Probably the first Fashion/Pop Art explosion of it’s type since the 1960’s and warmly received by a slightly bemused audience. Quite how Pip! Pip! talked Rob Bailey and the gang into this fun yet stressful happening is still a mystery to this day! All exisiting copies of the film were ‘lost’ so this only adds to the myth. Pip! Pip! recently uncovered seemingly the last copy at the bottom of a box in the attic on VHS video (ask your fathers kids) and a rush to slavage it was then the order of the day once the dust was blown off! Thanks to KEV on the IOW (the ex BBC guy) for helping us clean it up ready for this re-visit for a new generation to enjoy! Three Parts all worth watching and it should really have been on BBC3! Get your popcorn ready!

The YOUTUBE Description Text and Credits below:

Short 3-Part Documentary called READY! STEADY! SEW! that was created and shown ‘live’ to a standing room only audience of Hipsters & Scenesters as part of the MODSTOCK UK EVENT prior to a live catwalk event, via the newuntouchables in London 2004, which saw a Celebration of 40 Years of Modculture in all of its forms and glory! Big Thanks To Angie Smith, Caspar De La Mare, Pip! Pip! Rob Bailey and all those that gave us content and info and agreed to be interviewed! Filmed in and around London on April/May 2004!

DIRECTOR: Sean Wilson (BoyChild)
EDITORS: Sean Wilson & Alex Rupprecht
CAMERA: Alex Rupprecht
PRODUCTION ASSISTANT: Peter Jackson
PRODUCERS & WRITERS: Angie Smith & Sean Wilson
CO PRODUCERS: Barry & Denise @ Pip! Pip!
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Rob Bailey (newuntouchables.com)
SOUNDTRACK: The Gene Drayton Unit
REPORTER: Caspar (A Dandy in Aspic)
ART & GRAPHICS: Pip! Pip!

Based on an Original Concept by Bazden Pip! Pip! as part of Modstock 2004

A joint BOYCHILD PRODUCTION

PART ONE

PART TWO

PART THREE

 

Sexy Sixties – Chapter 1 Part A

The Age of Charm and Restlessness (1959-1961) Girls of the ‘Nouvelle Vague’

The young man leaves the cinema with an expression of deep satisfaction printed on his face. The film he watched had very little to do with anything he had ever watched before. It was a French movie and it had that continental charm that wasn’t very common in British films. And that girl, the actress Jean Seberg… the girl with the very short hair. What a girl! And how cool she was!

He is aware that there’s gonna be something new in the very way he’ll perceive these new films. Because they ‘are’ new, aren’t they?

These French films talk about the present, about real problems, tormented and contemporary love stories. They’re not just ‘movies’. They are the changing.

Walking under the thick rain of a greyish London, the young man knows that things will never be the same again. He thinks he’s falling in love with Jean Seberg. Or maybe with some other actress he’d watched in some other French film? Was she Jeanne Moreau? Brigitte Bardot? Bernadette Lafont? Anna Karina? God! They all look so modern, so different… Their world is made of groundbreaking frames, striking whites and deep, very deep blacks.

They don’t just ‘play’ the part. They are the part, they mean, resume, represent, symbolise the part. They produce real emotions and create from nothing a brand new way of being sexy. Hands up who wouldn’t date Jean Seberg, the young man thinks, his post-War shoes completely soaked with water, sinking in a landscape made of brown puddles.

And who are these new directors? Truffaut, Malle, Godard, Chabrol… Their names sound rather exotic. Where are they from? Are they all French? And – above all – why are their films all so incredibly sharp?

The young man is going home. Probably he’d find his mum screaming at his dad: “where ‘ave ya been? You’ve ‘ad a couple, you did. Didn’t ya?” and probably his dad would answer “Well, leave me alone now, I’m dead tired!”.

Yeah, probably.

But one thing is for sure: he’s not going to have something like that planned for his life. He doesn’t want that. He wants Jean Seberg.

The young man is continuing to walk, his home now behind his shoulders. He can’t see what his mum and dad are saying. Are they arguing or something? His girlfriend’s house is a few yards away, a two-storey Victorian semi-detached. He thinks he’s going there.

Knock knock.

His girlfriend opens the door. She’s nothing special really. And she does look a bit too old fashioned, with those curly things coming down off her head. “Too bloody Shirley Templish!”, the young man thinks.

“Hi”, he says.

“Hi” she says.

“Know what?”, he says, “Get a new haircut, girl, time for a change!”.

Le Beat Bespoké is an annual indoor festival @ 229 The Venue in London, promoted by the newuntouchables.com — spotlighting 21st Century Modernist & Sixties inspired underground music culture. There is also a series of sought after Compilation LPs with selections from DJ Dr Robert, picked from the dance ‘floorshakers’ of various NUTs events that compliment this wonderful, inclusive Event! Go to: http://www.newuntouchables.com/lebeatbespoke/

Shake Yourself Down Remix by Pip! Pip!

Author Recommendations -

The Best Films of the Rock & Roll Era (1955-1975) by Year

1955 - Rebel Without a Cause by Nicholas Ray
1956 - Giant by George Stevens
1957 - Twelve Angry Men by Sidney Lumet
1958 - Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Richard Brooks
1959 - Sleeping Beauty by Walt Disney
1960 - The Fugitive Kind by Sidney Lumet
1961 - The Hustler by Robert Rossen
1962 - To Kill a Mockingbird by Robert Mulligan
1963 - The Great Escape by John Sturges
1964 - My Fair Lady by George Cukor
1965 - The Cincinnati Kid by Norman Jewison
1966 - The Good, The Bad and the Ugly by Sergio Leone
1967 - Cool Hand Luke  by Stuart Rosenberg
1968 - 2001: A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick
1969 - Easy Rider by Dennis Hopper
1970 - Little Big Man by Arthur Penn
1971 - A Clockwork Orange  by Stanley Kubrick
1972 - The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean by John Huston
1973 - Papillon by Franklin J. Schaffner
1974 - The Godfather Part II by Francis Ford Coppola
1975 - Monty Python & the Holy Grail by Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones

Disagree? Leave a reply with your own favourites… NUTs Author? Make your own recommendations!