An early film, originally meant to be part of a three part set of adaptations of stories by Shelagh Delaney, which was never finished, which has many of the techniques that Anderson later used in If and O lucky Man. A girl finishes work in an open-plan office of the type there used to be, walks past the hanging body of another girl (or perhaps her own body- the film could be an after-death fantasy) takes a train to a Northern town, latches onto a civic tour led by the mayor and has a bag of chips in a café. That's the story. What goes with it is Anderson's strange way of looking at what may be reality- when the girl is going to catch the train a young upper-class man makes a long speech at her, both declaring his love and arguing for class distinctions. All the girl says is "Goodbye". Again, there is no way of telling if the man is a fantasy of the girl's or- if he is "real" in the film's context- whether he is connected with the girl in any way. In the Northern town the girl gets on/is roped into a tour led by the mayor. The mayor- played by Arthur Lowe, one of Anderson's regular actors- is both absurd and dignified, presented dead-pan the mace bearer is a sinister character, making gnomic remarks, a messenger of death, perhaps; the passengers include Africans and Indians and they look round the town- an industrialist's estate left to the town where he made his wealth, a girls' school, a museum, a library... In the end the girl wanders off and sits in a chippie with a bag of chips as the owners clean up around her- a perfect cinematic koan, no longer than it need be.
Afterword, two years later:
I forgot some important aspects in my last review, or I saw a different version today: the girl says "I'll write", not "Goodbye" to the upper-class young man and i'd forgotten how deliberately the film slides in and out of different kinds of reality and how much it uses parody and cliché- the mayor's obsession with "mucky books" in the library, the painting of Jesus with a flock of wolves in the art gallery, the tableau of Le Dejeuner sur l'Herbe in the park, the industrial estate depicted as a meaningless mechanical hell with the visitors walking immune through its perils, the realistic scene of Civil Defence practise which ends with the whole party turned into literal dummies except the girl. Above all, though, I forgot the film's opening: a different girl on a tour boat going downriver through London, past Parliament, photographed with ritualistic care, past the Shell Building, through the City where the girl in the film works, which makes the whole main action even more distanced and derealised.
Afterword, two years later:
I forgot some important aspects in my last review, or I saw a different version today: the girl says "I'll write", not "Goodbye" to the upper-class young man and i'd forgotten how deliberately the film slides in and out of different kinds of reality and how much it uses parody and cliché- the mayor's obsession with "mucky books" in the library, the painting of Jesus with a flock of wolves in the art gallery, the tableau of Le Dejeuner sur l'Herbe in the park, the industrial estate depicted as a meaningless mechanical hell with the visitors walking immune through its perils, the realistic scene of Civil Defence practise which ends with the whole party turned into literal dummies except the girl. Above all, though, I forgot the film's opening: a different girl on a tour boat going downriver through London, past Parliament, photographed with ritualistic care, past the Shell Building, through the City where the girl in the film works, which makes the whole main action even more distanced and derealised.