Tonight's movie was another documentary : "Good Times, Wonderful Times" (1964), again from Lionel Rogosin, the director behind "On The Bowery". It was included as a bonus feature on the same dvd, and IMDB described it as a noted anti-war film so I decided to give it a shot. Though I found "Bowery" depressing, there was no doubt about Rogosin's prowess as a filmmaker, which is amply demonstrated in "Good Times" from the opening scene. The camera pans across a table lined with liquor bottles, high grade stuff. The picture is black and white, high contrast but full grey scale and very crisp. Glasses clink and we hear early instrumental rock music, the kind of "jazzy" guitar rock that coexisted for a while with Merseybeat. You might remember hearing examples of it in episodes of "Gilligan's Island", and coincidentally the film's year of release was the same year that Gilligan went on the air and the year The Beatles broke out in America.
So, we see the bottles and hear the music, and then we see people dancing in a crowded living room. From the look of them, and the style of dance, this could only be the early 1960s and in fact it is. We are at a cocktail party in London, just as that city was becoming the pop cultural center of the world. "Swinging" London was all the rage at that time, and Rogosin uses it's "sophisticated" culture to frame the rest of what he is going to show us. At the party, a heavily mascaraed woman casually talks about her sexual conquests. The man to whom she is speaking is a witty chap, but silly, and he is only paying attention to her because.....well, you know why. She seems at least to have something resembling a brain, while he is obviously a lightweight, or possibly one of those people for whom serious conversation is difficult. The woman fidgets and picks at her hair. The man attempts joke after lame joke. Younger people dance in the background. One guy who looks like Peter Asher of the pop duo Peter and Gordon is particularly supple. I don't know if he's doing The Frug, The Jerk or The Hully Gully, but he's on top of it, he's got his moves down.
The party looks like fun, especially if you were in London and "making the scene" at the very time a paradigm shift was blowin' in the wind.
But as more alcohol is consumed, the talk becomes more serious. A young man is present who has been a mercenary in the Congo. The mascaraed woman asks him what it was like to kill people. Another youth speaks up against war. The discussion remains polite, no tempers flare - this is England, after all - but viewpoints that might've withheld are now expressed under the influence. Some of the partygoers see war as an inevitable, an eternal part of the human condition. "There will always be war", one woman says with authority. This idea sounds more like a repetition of something she heard elsewhere rather than a carefully thought out opinion of her own.
Rogosin will now show you what war is like. The party is one setting for the film, constituting half the movie. Scenes of war are the other half, and we are talking actual footage here, of the grisliest atrocities that can be imagined. Rogosin is saying, in a deliberately un-subtle manner : "Well, here we have all of these modern and oh-so-sophisticated people, glibly talking about war at a cocktail party, and - wait a minute while I splice this edit - over here, we have the Real Thing. What do you think about that"?
People talking about war while drinking and dancing vs. Actual war. Hmmm, let me think about that for a moment.
This is all he is really presenting us with, but it's more than enough. I don't think he's trying to demean the partygoers, but trying, rather, to show how far removed they are from the reality of what they are talking about. They have strong opinions, but with the exception of the mercenary and one other veteran, no one at the party has any actual wartime experience.
Rogosin cuts back and forth throughout the movie, and as the party discussions get heavier, so do the scenes of war. Folks, this is the rawest of raw footage. It's not for anyone but the most hardened viewers. I have often remarked on my own personal wonder that anyone survived World War Two, and I double down on that here. If there is any doubt that war is - literally - Hell, let it be dispelled with this film. The footage is like something out of a Bosch painting, only worse.
So that's all the film really consists of; the conversations at the party contrasted against the scenes of carnage. I don't know if the cocktail talk was scripted, another work of "docufiction" like "On The Bowery" , but I found "Good Times" more involving overall than that film, because - let's face it - you cannot fail to be shocked to your core by what you have seen.
Rogosin had a genius idea to use the party as a framework for the war footage. In doing so, he also captured a moment in time when Idealism was peaking around the world. The cynicism that would infect the later part of the 1960s was still far off, and kids in 1964 just wanted to dance the night away. It's ironic, given Rogosin's vision.
Two Enormous Thumbs Up for "Good Times, Wonderful Times", but again, a Triple Caveat about the war footage. It's not for the remotely squeamish. If you even think you won't be able to handle it, don't watch. /////
That's all for now. I'm gonna head down to the store and for a short CSUN walk. I'm off until Sunday morning, so maybe tomorrow we'll go for a hike. By "we" I mean you and me, of course. Until then, I'll see you tonight at the Usual Time.
Tons of love! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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