Flipside 012: Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush

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bamwc2
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Re: Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush (Clive Donner, 1968)

#26 Post by bamwc2 » Sat Sep 11, 2010 8:40 pm

MichaelB wrote:I think the sensible thing might be to make it clear that you're not reviewing a final release version, because we've had this problem before with Winstanley - and while that was largely harmless (since Beaver said it was region-locked and it wasn't), this could be more serious. As far as I'm aware, there's a contractual obligation to region-code this disc, and the packaging certainly says it's Region B.

For what it's worth, my general rule when reviewing for Sight & Sound is to assume region-coding unless I have either a final release version that I can personally check, or the distributor's assurance that it's region-free. (And usually the distributor has to be someone like Nick at MoC who I trust: a PR agency usually doesn't have much of a clue).

Gary has changed it to read: Region B (A and C untested)

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Person
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Re: Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush (Clive Donner, 1968)

#27 Post by Person » Sat Sep 11, 2010 10:18 pm

Sixties, The: Always say, "the so called 'swinging Sixties'. Not as good as you'd be made to believe. Small towns remainded and continue to be as they were re-War. See: Hendrix, James "Jimi" Marshall; LSD; Free Love; Bernard Levin.

frankiecrisp
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Re: Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush (Clive Donner, 1968)

#28 Post by frankiecrisp » Sun Sep 12, 2010 4:07 am

I watched this last night first time I'd seen it since the early 70s . the small film about Stevenage was good 60/70s architecture was terrible 500 things you can do with concrete. Stevenage looks like East Germany .


The Glue Man
Joined: Tue Mar 11, 2008 2:38 pm

Re: Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush (Clive Donner, 1968)

#30 Post by The Glue Man » Tue Sep 14, 2010 3:38 pm

Well, my copy arrived today... Not played it yet but I would like to send this message to the BFI:
SpoilerShow
Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!
:D

I think I've been waiting about 16 years for this to be released (legitimately) in some format or another, and can't quite believe it's sitting in my living room right now!

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RossyG
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Re: Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush (Clive Donner, 1968)

#31 Post by RossyG » Sun Sep 19, 2010 5:55 am

A Stevenage-based poster on a website I visit says there's a hand-written poster on the window of the HMV in town saying something like, "'Here We Go Round The Mulbury [sic] Bush - awaiting new stock".

Nice that the locals are so enthused.

Now if only BFI Flipside would take advantage of the new HD transfer of Psychomania then I almost guarantee there'd be similar enthusiasm centred around the Walton-on-Thames HMV. Hint, hint... :)

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MichaelB
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Re: Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush (Clive Donner, 1968)

#32 Post by MichaelB » Sun Sep 19, 2010 3:22 pm

RossyG wrote:Now if only BFI Flipside would take advantage of the new HD transfer of Psychomania then I almost guarantee there'd be similar enthusiasm centred around the Walton-on-Thames HMV. Hint, hint... :)
Well, Anthony Simmons lives in Walton-on-Thames, and three of his films are being spread across Shadows of Progress and Stop! Look! Listen!...

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RossyG
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Re: Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush (Clive Donner, 1968)

#33 Post by RossyG » Sun Sep 19, 2010 4:54 pm

Interesting! Were the films shot there too? I was born and raised in Walton and like to see the place on TV and film. Nettlefold was based there and Shepperton is just over the river, so it pops up from time to time. I'll watch out for Simmons' films on those sets, keeping my eyes peeled for any Walton streets.

Nerdy, I know, but I was watching Emergency Call last week and got a buzz seeing the old chip shop in Bridge street with Thora Hird behind the counter. Also, Walton Bridge appeared on one of the police shorts on the first COI DVD.

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MichaelB
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Re: Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush (Clive Donner, 1968)

#34 Post by MichaelB » Sun Sep 19, 2010 4:57 pm

RossyG wrote:Interesting! Were the films shot there too? I was born and raised in Walton and like to see the place on TV and film. Nettlefold was based there and Shepperton is just over the river, so it pops up from time to time. I'll watch out for Simmons' films on those sets, keeping my eyes peeled for any Walton streets.
Sadly not - the only link with Walton-on-Thames is that he lives there now!


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MichaelB
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Re: Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush (Clive Donner, 1968)

#36 Post by MichaelB » Fri Oct 08, 2010 6:21 am

DVD Active - another Wilson Bros epic.

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MichaelB
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Re: Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush (Clive Donner, 1968)

#37 Post by MichaelB » Wed Nov 10, 2010 5:41 am

...and here's an even longer review by Britmovie's Drewe Shimon.

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antnield
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Re: Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush (Clive Donner, 1968)

#38 Post by antnield » Tue Dec 07, 2010 6:00 pm

This didn't make the print edition, but in the online version of Sight & Sound's year-end poll Jane Giles reveals that this was "the BFI's fastest-selling DVD release ever".

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RossyG
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Re: Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush (Clive Donner, 1968)

#39 Post by RossyG » Wed Dec 08, 2010 9:20 am

Cool. On a cult TV and Film website I go on, people are listing their favourite BDs of the year and Mulberry Bush has popped up a few times.

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colinr0380
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Re: Flipside 012: Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush

#40 Post by colinr0380 » Wed Nov 02, 2016 7:45 am

I enjoyed this, though it is part of a subgenre that I find the least appealing of all: the randy, wisecracking teen desperately trying to lose his virginity (with or without the help of his mates) film! But I like Y Tu Mama Tambien a lot, so there are always exceptions to my general dislike!

Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush is perhaps the ultimate version of the teen sex comedy, in the sense that it buries itself so intimately and completely inside the thoughts of the main character that what at first just seems like casual objectifying and happy-go-lucky dating takes on a more poignant sense of trying to find the right person, and maybe losing them, before moving on to the next interchangeable 'thing', the next girl, the next classic novel to be read, the next job, the next town, with all new opportunities but no guarantee of permanence. Its perhaps more than just about the casual sex revolution, though that is the main theme, but about the 'casual society' on a wider level, which suits some people perfectly and leaves others floundering around a bit.

That's why, although I'd agree with ellipsis7's comment about this seeming to anticipate the more comically crude 'schoolboy-versus-housewife' sex comedies of Robin Askwith and later the Barry Egan and Judy Geeson-starring Adventures of a Taxi Driver (as well as current Channel 4 'youth programming' such as The Inbetweeners), I also got a low key sense of connection to Billy Liar from this film too - mainly from the main character's constant dream reveries that liven up a dull world with visions of buxom au pairs in place of his homely mother and so on, but also because we get to see Jamie go through various unsatisfying relationships whilst lusting after the Julie Christie equivalent in the seemingly out of his league free spirited woman, Mary.

The main difference is that in Billy Liar the relationships are just another facet of Billy's life that seem to be out of his control and when an opportunity actually is finally presented to him for a different life that he fantasises about, its too late for Billy to have the courage to seize it. In Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush, the relationships, or potential relationships, are the only thing on Jamie's mind throughout, and while they eventually prove unsatisfying in all sorts of ways, Jamie is the one who is off on his way somewhere else at the end, older but wiser and with the implication that he has perhaps gone through a necessary stage of any young man's development in which it is a shame nothing lasting resulted but everyone knew it was just a time of casual experimentation. Ironically except the fantasist!

It is probably intended that the title sounds a bit like it could be "Here we go round the merry-go-round" or something like that, because its sort of about what happens when you are cycling through casual partners, picking up and dropping each girl, and then suddenly reach someone you want to stay with but find the momentum of the 'casual sex paradigm' pushing things onwards to a similar inevitable conclusion! Mary is the one girl who herself is shown taking the most advantage of the times, cycling through various guys throughout the course of the film until she and Jamie finally get together at the end. But while this is the climax of Jamie's journey (quite literally! And it actually is very appropriate that the sex scene with Mary is where the most explicit nudity is casually thrown into the film, adding that slightly shocking moment of truth sense of "well, here's the breasts you wanted" for both Jamie and the audience), Mary is just treating this as another fun but casual fling, making plans for next weekend with another guy whilst out at the marina with Jamie, causing Jamie to storm (or swim!) off in a huff and Mary to disappear off into the distance on her yacht. I found both characters understandable at that point, though Jamie the much more naive one to expect that his own feelings completely represented those of Mary too. He was perhaps reacting so strongly as much because of the pedestal he'd put her on, and judged all of the other girls in the film by, only to have his illusions shattered as he wasn't the end of the road for Mary, just another guy for her that made for a fun weekend but not too much more. (In fact it could be argued that Mary is 'slumming it' a bit with schoolboy of her own age Jamie, considering the chaps she is usually hanging around with have their own cars and yachts to hand!)

There is also a great inevitability to this relationship from the outset, with Jamie mooning over her from afar before going on his dates with other girls, but we 'know' that Mary is being saved until last. And that is the case, but its only 'last' for Jamie in this area before going off to university and "a whole new set of girls" as his friend excitedly notes. The one aspect that jarred a little for me here is the rather unnecessary 'moral comeuppance' given to Mary as Jamie's friend notes when they see her from a distance that Mary failed her exams, presumably due to spending too much time going from one man to another. Even though we see Mary from a distance chatting happily to a friend (a friend that Jamie suddenly eyes up as finally being attractive, perhaps because she passed her exams!), there is a sense of punishment there that the guys never get for all of their antics. Their punishment is to forever ceaselessly roam from miniskirted girl to miniskirted girl I suppose!

I suppose it goes without saying that this is probably a film that would upset feminists! I think the film being shown entirely through the eyes of, and narrated by, the main character mitigates the approach taken a lot though. This is a world in which every young woman surrounding our supermarket delivery boy hero is impossibly beautiful (even those only seen from behind!) and always mini-skirted, even the girls organising 'religious raves' and having heavily implied affairs with the local, with-it vicar!

All of the dating antics with the other girls are very broad, usually focusing in on a couple of annoying character traits that each girl has that either turns Jamie off, or he has to consciously ignore (until we get to Mary, who is 'flawless' in Jamie's eyes). There's the working class girl Linda living in the block of flats, who Jamie rather looks down on, and who hastily clatters down the concrete steps in high heels. Then at the height of passion she either leans against a fence like a mannequin (her purple dress amazing against the light blue fence!), unmoving even during the first kiss in some very funny shots! Before suddenly squealing with passion and rolling on the grass on her own when nobody is touching her!

Then there's the 'high class' girl Caroline, who is introduced playing the slot machines in the private club and simpering nothing but "Super!" to Jamie's come on lines. She teaches Jamie golf and how to find his balls in the bunker, but her section concludes with a moment of staying overnight in the family mansion where her parents (including Denholm Elliot as the father, eyeing up the maid whilst mother has her eye on Jamie!) get everyone drunk on all manner of booze, followed by a night of slamming door bedroom swapping farce antics to rival those in The Secret of My Success decades later!

And what to say about the big orgy 'bed-in' scene at the furniture store that literalises the casual swapping aspect of it all with perhaps the largest number of people kissing together in one single shot that I've ever seen! And the fun use of all the various pieces of furniture as ironic commentary (of course the shy lad gets Mary first, much to Jamie's chagrin! And they're doing it on a love seat, no less!), climaxing with Jamie's unmemorable loss of virginity on an actual bed, almost just to get it out of the way.

Its a very interesting film, celebratory of the permissive attitude of the 60s and the potential of the young people to bounce back from setbacks, but with an interesting undercurrent of coercion and 'who am I really doing all this for?' questions. As much as the women are objectified here, Jamie also jealously projects onto the guys in the film, from worrying that his younger brother is doing better than he is, to seemingly following in the footsteps of his more promiscuous friend, Spike! At the end Spike is the one weirdly moralistically pointing out Mary's downfall, and I got the sense that whilst Jamie was trying to live up to the expectations of his friends and family, and society in general, about what he should be doing, he didn't really get much of an opportunity to make his own choices. I think Jamie isn't too bothered by that (there's that wonderful early scene of Jamie outside Mary's house watching a couple of younger boys having a disagreement about which way to walk, with one eventually giving in and being welcomed back into the gang, with the watching Jamie wishing he had someone looking out for him like that!), but it was another aspect that left me with a Billy Liar sense to the film.
____

The short films on here are as perfectly contextually appropriate to the main feature as always! The first film, Because That Road Is Trodden, is picking up on the theme of going into the thoughts of a teenage boy through the use of constant narration. The main difference is that rather than a working class lad, this is a public school boy having reveries about love and his future whilst going to, or skipping out on, lessons at his boarding school! There are lots of allusions to classical literature, religion and philosophy here compared to the main feature leaving all of the literature to Jamie's mother reading Dickens and Dostoevsky in her hair curlers! The main thing that I took from the film was that I guess that the benefits of a classical education are that it gives you a good set of universally acknowledged references to use in your adolescent reveries rather than leaving you to create them all yourself! You don't even really need to comment on having quoted from a Robert Frost poem, just use the words for your current purposes, secure in the knowledge that everyone understands where you are coming from.

The second film is a fun piece advertising the attractions and amenities of Stevenage, made a few years after Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush shot there and featuring a lot of the same 'attractions' (see our underpass! look at our traffic islands and concrete shopping plazas!). It does do a lot to make Stevenage seem a very attractive place, full of space, parks, full (but not too crowded) schools, assisted care homes for the elderly close to their families, and so on. I'd need to know more about the living conditions in the boroughs of London at the time to make a contrast against these 'new towns' being built entirely from scratch on the outskirts of the city for Londoners to overflow into, but I get the impression that even the monolithic tower blocks were somewhat of a novelty, at least at this early stage of Stevenage's existence!

There is something interesting here about seeing a whole town being laid out and planned from scratch, which I suppose is an architect's dream in terms of a creating a unified, coherent space dedicated to giving the public places to walk or safe routes to schools and so on. But in its idyllic view of what life is like for those lucky enough to live in Stevenage (everyone is waved off to work in the morning by their family and neighbours with a cheery smile! The parks aren't full of flashers and children are fishing in the lake rather than yobs urinating into it!), it seems a little naive in its approach. Not horribly naive, and it is a film made by the "Stevenage Development Committee" to portray their town in the best possible light so that is to be expected (I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn't more celebratory in some ways!), but life here runs so smoothly that I was left a little suspicious!

It also contrasts interestingly back to that Because That Road Is Trodden short from earlier, as that all takes place in a boarding school full of history of generations of public school boys having trodden those floors, and used the same secret society cubby holes, or sung in the same choirs, standing in the same pews in the same cathedral for generations. Stevenage is an ahistorical place in that sense, a place meant to provide houses to people who shouldn't need to have a sense of their history, of a lineage and connection to a place more than it being a transient dwelling (that's probably the root of some societal problems too - treat people as if their past doesn't matter and soon they'll treat yours just the same). Although there are pluses and minuses in that you might feel the weight of history on you compared to being carefree and liberated, albeit unmoored; whilst at least with a past there is a society to build upon compared to being entirely and obviously manufactured in a social engineering experiment manner. I suppose though that this history is something that itself comes with time, after people have lived in any place for long enough. Unless someone is living an entirely rootless existence, and even then it would be arguable, a historical context always arises eventually. Hey, we've circled back around to Y Tu Mama Tambien again!

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