Anyone else a fan of the movie?
One of my favorites... watch it a couple times a year!
First a link to:
Quadrophenia (Special Edition) (1979)
@ Amazon.com - Price: $12.47 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25
Now a movie review that "captures" the movie:
Quadrophenia
Drugs, Sex, Fighting, Cool Music and Scooters
A Review by John Lowe (Trojan Skins SC)
Made in 1979, Quadrophenia was a razor sharp, coming of age movie. It had scooters, sex, fights and more drugs than ICI and Boots the chemist, combined.
A youthful Phil Daniels, gave the performance of his life, a blistering portrayal of Jimmy, a fucked up teenage pill head. The film was a triumph. Some critics hated it, but for many people, it touched a nerve and lodged in their brain. It did not damage sales of scooters, Fred Perrys or fishtails either. It was so powerful that it started a Mod revival.
So what is it all about?
For Jimmy, the highs meant riding his scooter around London at night, with his mates. It meant being dressed to the nines, wearing his shades and cranked up to eleven on speed.
Early on in the film, Jimmy tells his old school mate Kevin (now a rocker), how being a mod is all about being different. Jimmy tries his best to stand apart, by brawling, gate crashing parties, popping blues by the fistful and trying to be the coolest mod of the lot.
The film moves up a gear, when Jimmy and his mates blast down to Brighton, for some bank holiday kicks. The explosive caff trashing, deckchair and beach riot scenes, which were shot on Brighton seafront, were cinematically speaking "the dogs nadgers". Anyone would get an adrenaline buzz, watching a mass street battle, with a sea of green parkas wadding into leather jacketed rockers with a chant of "we are the mods, we are the mods, we are, we are, we are the mods"
The violence is authentically ugly too. The riots look real, because they almost were. The rioting extras who were scooterists from York and the South West and various bikers, were given potatoes to throw at each other, but things got a little out of hand and they started chucking rocks.
All in all it was quite a weekend for Jimmy Cooper. As if he was not having enough fun fighting bikers, on the prom, he even gets to shag Leslie Ash in an alleyway (lucky bastard), mid riot.
The word quadrophenia, is supposed to mean double - schizophrenia, a reference to Jimmys extra generous helping of mental instability. An intense character, Jimmy suffers from the usual adolescent neuroses, amplified by the usual things: drugs, (too much) sex (not enough) music (excellent), gangs (violent and not too bright) and hero worship (ill advised). His biggest problems really begin when he takes The Kinks song "All Day and all of the Night" and burns out over a too long weekend.
In a drug-crazed attempt to relive the weekends glories, he quits his job, returns to Brighton, where several blue pills later he hits rock bottom. By the end Jimmys pursuit of the Mod ideal has left him homeless, jobless and scooterless.
Disillusioned and close to insanity, he has further salt rubbed into his wounds when he discovers that his hero "The Ace Face" is just a hotel bellboy. Finally paranoid enough to let a bit of realism cut through the teenage confusion, he ends up agonizing over the meaning of it all at Beachy Head.
The penny drops and he realizes that not everyone shares his faith in the mod way of life. To everyone else it just a laugh, something to do at the weekend. Close to mental collapse and on the brink of suicide, he is forced to wake up to reality, in the words of Pete Townsend "he just realizes that all he has in life is himself and some spiritual future.
A True Cult Movie
