I'll Never Forget What's'isname

I'll Never Forget What's 'Isname
Theatrical release poster
Directed byMichael Winner
Written byPeter Draper
Produced byMichael Winner
Starring
CinematographyOtto Heller
Edited byBernard Gribble
Music byFrancis Lai[1]
Production
companies
Distributed byRank Film Distributors
Release dates
  • 18 December 1967 (1967-12-18) (London)
  • 18 April 1968 (1968-04-18) (NYC)
Running time
99 minutes
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish

I'll Never Forget What's 'Isname, also known as The Takers, is a 1967 British comedy-drama film directed and produced by Michael Winner. It stars Oliver Reed and Orson Welles.[2] It was written by Peter Draper. The film deals with creativity and commercialism.

Plot

The opening credits run as a man carries a large axe through the streets of London. He then enters an office and destroys a desk with the axe. The man, Andrew Quint, works for Dallafield Advertising alongside Lute. Quint has a string of affairs with younger women despite being married. He begins to recall his torturous school days, and these memories entwine with the present.

Quint attempts to get back at his boss, Jonathan Lute, by making a negative commercial reusing themes from earlier in the film, including Lute saying, "The number one product of all human endeavor is waste... waste." The commercial, advertising a Super-8 camera, talks about capturing events while you still can before everything is destroyed and discarded. It ends with Quint operating a car crusher and destroying numerous cameras. The commercial is hailed as a masterpiece and wins an award, but Quint hurls the award into the River Thames and escapes into Swinging London.

Cast

Soundtrack

The soundtrack by Francis Lai was released on LP by Decca Records (Decca DL 79163).[1][3]

Critical reception

The film received mixed reviews, with critics praising individual performances while questioning its overall coherence and thematic focus.

Several reviewers appreciated the film's ambitious scope and star performances. Richard Schickel wrote positively in Life magazine: "The people responsible for this movie have taken a big chance, deliberately blowing their cool in the hope that they can overpower ours. For me, the gamble worked."[4] Leonard Maltin's 2008 Movie Guide described the film as an "excellent comedy drama".[5]

However, many critics found the film's execution lacking despite its potential. The Monthly Film Bulletin offered a mixed assessment, noting that while "this tragi-comedy is bursting with brightness and ideas," these elements were "on the whole too confused to add up to very much." The review particularly praised Orson Welles' performance as the advertising tycoon and Otto Heller's Technicolor photography, suggesting the film had "a distinction that probably goes beyond its deserts."[6]

Other critics were more dismissive of the film's 1960s sensibilities. Leslie Halliwell described it as a "vivid yet muddled tragi-comedy of the sixties, with splashes of sex and violence in trendy settings, a hero one really doesn't believe in, and a title which seems to have no meaning whatsoever."[7] VideoHound's Golden Movie Retriever (2007) suggested that "to some tastes, this overwrought and long-unseen comedy from the swinging '60s will be completely dated with characters whose mindsets are totally alien."[8]

A contemporaneous review in The Kentucky Kernel summarized the film's central problem, writing that it "came off as a pessimistic reiteration of the existing war between traditions and society, and individuality and the arts. It sparked here and there and was just about to catch fire when something would inevitably happen to drag it back into the groove it had started for itself."[9]

Controversy

In the United States, the film was denied a MPAA seal of approval due to a scene between Oliver Reed and Carol White which supposedly implied cunnilingus.[10] Winner, in his audio commentary, said he considered the scene to show masturbation. The Catholic League inaccurately described it as "fellatio". Universal distributed the film through Regional Film Distributors, a subsidiary that was not a member of the MPAA. Along with a similar scene in Charlie Bubbles (1967), this helped to bring about the end of the Production Code in the U.S. and its replacement with a ratings system.

The film has been incorrectly named as the first mainstream film to propose the use of "fuck" in dialogue. In fact, the BBFC certified the film after demanding the removal, or at least obscuring, of the word fucking (via the sound of a car horn) in June 1967, three months later than Ulysses (1967), which suffered heavier cuts. The error seems to have arisen because of a longstanding lack of easily obtainable film release date information.

References

  1. ^ a b "Decca Issues Varied Spring LPs". Cash Box. 20 April 1968. p. 54.
  2. ^ "I'll Never Forget What's'isname". British Film Institute Collections Search. Retrieved 31 December 2023.
  3. ^ "Francis Lai – I'll Never Forget What's 'Isname (Original Soundtrack Album)". Discogs. 1968. Retrieved 14 September 2024.
  4. ^ Schickel, Richard (17 May 1968). "A Bitter No-Exit from Success". Life. p. 12. Retrieved 31 December 2023.
  5. ^ Maltin, Leonard (2007). Leonard Maltin's 2008 Movie Guide. p. 655. ISBN 978-0-451-22186-5.
  6. ^ "I'll Never Forget What's'isname". The Monthly Film Bulletin. 35 (408): 5. 1 January 1968. ProQuest 1305827052.
  7. ^ Halliwell, Leslie (1989). Halliwell's Film Guide (7th ed.). London: Paladin. p. 505. ISBN 978-0-586-08894-4.
  8. ^ Craddock, Jim, ed. (2006). VideoHound's Golden Movie Retriever 2007. Thomson Gale. p. 430. ISBN 978-0-7876-8980-3.
  9. ^ Rexroat, Gary (14 October 1958). "Movie Depicts Society Vs. Arts". The Kentucky Kernel.
  10. ^ Winner, Michael (2013). Michael Winner: Winner Takes All: A Life of Sorts. Pavilion Books. ISBN 978-1-909396-21-0.
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