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| Images courtesy of Universal Pictures |
Prior to becoming synonymous with Charles Bronson starring
vigilante vengeance fare such as The Mechanic and Death Wish, controversial
yet prolific British film director Michael Winner first started out in the
musical comedy subgenre with sometimes occasional forays into drama. Alongside director Ken Russell, Michael
Winner proceeded to forge a six-film working relationship with British
Hellraiser and acting titan Oliver Reed beginning with 1964’s The System followed
by The Jokers and I’ll Never Forget What’s ‘isname both made in
1967. While The Jokers was a
surefire commercial hit, I’ll Never Forget What’s ‘isname ran into some
trouble over its sexual content, being one of the very first mainstream movies
to imply female oral sexual pleasure as well as uttering the F word, and the
film was ultimately released without a rating per Universal Pictures through a
subsidy company which only fueled its anarchic countercultural notoriety.
Opening with a key title sequence of Oliver Reed heading to
his office with a very large axe, I’ll Never Forget What’s ‘isname featuring
a hip energetic score by Oscar winning Love Story composer Francis Lai
and slick stately camerawork by Czech Peeping Tom cinematographer Otto
Heller announces itself out of the gate as a take-no-prisoners dose of
upheaval. Very quickly we learn the man’s
name is Andrew Quint and he’s just destroyed his office at Dallafield
Advertising alongside veteran commercial advertisement filmmaker Jonathan Lute
(Orson Welles). Although married, Quint engages
out of wedlock in a seemingly random never-ending series of torrid affairs with
much younger women. After winning an
award for a commercial involving a Super 8 camera featuring a car crusher
demolishing an armada of cameras, Quint promptly chucks the award into the River
Thames and goes on a soul-searching odyssey through Swinging London traveling
through parties and recurring humiliations including getting into fist fights
he can’t win.
Featuring sneak cameos from industry players including Overlord
director Stuart Cooper, Frank Finlay and an uncredited Anthony Sharp (A
Clockwork Orange), I’ll Never Forget What’s ‘isname is a
supercharged dose of British nihilist satire with a kindred outlook to the New
York based Little Murders. Sardonic
and smart nosed with cynical dialogue from screenwriter Peter Draper delivered
with high snark by Oliver Reed and particularly Orson Welles, Marianne Faithful
and Carol White, it functions largely as an arena for Reed to wreak havoc
including but not limited to being violent towards the surrounding female
characters. A bleak yet impishly funny
romp that at once excoriates the machinations of the advertising industry and
provides Reed with ample room to exude disaffection over his whole life and line
of work, winds up functioning as a quasi-companion piece to Orson Welles’
then-unmade The Other Side of the Wind for its meta multi-media
interactivity and study of the creative process.
Released in London in 1967 followed by a New York premiere the
following year, the cynical sixties black comedy didn’t make a huge hit with
audiences amid censorship problems and criticism across the board was decidedly
mixed. Still, others saw it as a bold
risk taker whose penchant for outbursts of violence and mayhem in a way helped
forecast director Michael Winner’s eventual pairing with the equally feral
alpha male Charles Bronson. For Reed, it
was on the cusp of his pairing with Ken Russell who with the actor also pushed
boundaries and buttons in terms of what you could depict onscreen in terms of
sex and/or nudity.
As a snapshot of the so-called Swinging Sixties, it
functions somewhat as a satirical progenitor to Robert Downey, Sr.’s still
provocative and brilliant Putney Swope smashing together elements of sex
and violence with surreal dark comedy.
Pointing towards a shifting mentality within the advertising world while
also functioning as a vehicle for Reed to smash through desks and walls,
Michael Winner’s I’ll Never Forget What’s ‘isname in title, in theory
and in practice is a portrait of one man’s anarchic rejection of the sociopolitical
and financial conventions governing his way of life. You could think of the character of Andrew
Quint as a proto-Earl Keese or Lester Burnham, ready to throw off the shackles
of their lives and start making trouble.
--Andrew Kotwicki
