Apparently controversial in 1963 when it was made (I don't remember it), The Party's Over is evocative of so many films i saw around that time in the cinema when I was seventeen. Guy Hamilton the director removed his name from it and moved on to making James Bond films. It's still a curiosity though to anyone like myself who likes to wallow in nostalgia for b/w movies, full screen and suffused with a jazz soundtrack and familiar faces from that pre Beatles era. Louise Sorel is the daughter of an American businessman and is now slumming it with some beatniks in London. Her father, played by Eddie Albert (giving the most professional performance) sends Clifford David over here to rescue her. He is her fiance and works for her father and he comes over to where he thinks she will be living but is unable to find her. The truth is she's avoiding him. Oliver Reed and others have designs on the young lady as well and they all meet in a den where booze flows freely and cigarette smoke clouds the air. Whether there were any drugs available there, I couldn't see but they may have been using more than just booze from the state of some of them. After the party they walk in a gang, zombie like, across one of the bridges in London and Oliver Reed (way over the top) flicks his cigarette butt at the watchful copper on the beat. He wouldn't get away with that today. The viewer gas the impression that these are quite well off middle to upper class young people as they seem to have plenty of money for drink and lazing around. This inevitably leads to tragic circumstances, given the amount of booze flowing and the rather banal script needing something dark to keep our interest. The cast is let down by a weak lead in Clifford David, an actor I've never heard of before. He takes a liking to the beautiful Catherine Woodville and she to him. She gives one of the best performances in the film but they lack chemistry I thought. Oliver is way over the top with his acting but he was on the verge of breaking through in a big way as I well remember and I went to most of his subsequent pictures in the sixties. Ann Lynn plays another of his clingy girl friends and is quite good also. I kept thinking how sad it is now that these young actors on the up, have now mostly left us. Mike Pratt, famous on TV was also a songwriter and here plays a beatnik. He died young at 45 from lung cancer but he wrote a lot of songs with Lionel Bart for Tommy Steele, including the children's favourite, Little White Bull sung by Tommy. As I say, this I found a curiosity, having missed it at the time and I couldn't resist a nostalgic look, although it's not very good.
Review of The Party's Over
