Expresso Bongo (1960)

I love this movie so much

That was an excellent one.

Fantastic!

The acting in this movie is really good.

Watching any film 50 years after you last saw it is, at any time, a mildly unnerving experience. A film that boasts the dubious title 'Expresso Bongo' and features a not-greatly post-pubescent Cliff Richard should have provided a strong warning that turning back the clock is not always a good idea but, actually, this was a great pleasure. Based on a successful stage musical and set in the heart of the Soho music industry of the late 1950s as it comes to terms with rock and roll , 'Expresso Bongo' retains a salty edge even now. Laurence Harvey plays a chancer who happens to come across a young rocker (Cliff Richard) who he seeks to exploit shamelessly but who then proves more than a match for him. With a sharp, pungent and funny script (by 50s star writer Wolf Mankowitz) and plenty of night location shooting in Soho, the film fizzes along for the most part, resembling 'Sweet Smell of Success', but with songs and a slightly softer edge. The version on this DVD has been shorn of its extrinsic musical numbers (including one sung by old-style musical promoter Maier Tzelniker that I remember well, starting 'When I compare these little bleeders to the chorus from Aida….nausea!') but still has time for the wonderfully cynical 'Shrine on the Second Floor', as Cliff is propelled into religiosity to further his career. Harvey's weaselly good looks are just right and Sylvia Sims is very sexy as his long-suffering stripper girlfriend. Even Cliff acquits himself well, with just the right amount of ambivalence as to his complicity (including being asked, not for the last time, why he has no girlfriend). In a film where everyone is either on the make or being exploited, sometimes at the same time, there is at least one poignant real-life parallel. The distinguished stage actress Hermione Baddelley here plays a veteran street tart. She has a couple of affectionate scenes with Harvey, with whom, despite their age difference, she had a relationship in the early 1950s just as his career was getting under way. Now, Harvey was on a roll and would shortly go to Hollywood on the strength of his next film, 'Man at the Top'.

This is kind of an annoying low-budget film, but at least I, an American, got to see what the fuss used to be about the UK singer Cliff Richard, whom I had never seen before. I also have never seen Lawrence Harvey in a semi-comedic role. He seemed as if he were on speed, or coke; very annoying. I kept yelling, "Give the guy a Valium!" And his accent drifted from plummy English to South African to European Yiddish, and back again. Most disconcerting.But watch the film for future celebs! There's Hermione Baddley (who was on "Maude"), playing a street-walking prostitute (!), there's Burt Kouwk (who played Cato in all those Pink Panther movies), playing a dissolute Soho youth, and Susan Hampshire ("Upstairs, Downstairs," and various TV movies).The film's depiction of Soho reminded me of old American films' depictions of 42nd St. in N.Y. Really cheesy.And apparently there wasn't too much censorship of British films then, because we see in this film lots of true female nudity (the strippers in the film). Man, I haven't seen breasts like those in ages! (All natural, all non-augmented.) See this as an interesting historical time capsule.

Harvey's performance is akin to Cary Grant in His girl Friday which I term "Cary Grant unleashed" Like Grant, Harvey takes his character and far from overacting rather sets the screen on fire. As for the movie itself,it lags when Harvey is not on the screen and it needs another actress in the Dixie roll who can somehow match Harvey. Dixie drags down the last third of the film. For the legions who deem Harvey's career as a series of zombie-like performances, Bongo turns that opinion on it's ear. Cliff Richard does a good job in his first screen roll. Beware of the current DVD release. It does not have several musical numbers and this greatly mars the movie.

A British radio show asked for people to ring in to tell them what they thought was the worst film ever made. Several people mentioned Expresso Bongo. This might not be the best film ever made, but let us be fair: I can think of at least a couple of hundred films worse than this.The story tells of the exploits of an unscrupulous theatrical agent (Laurence Harvey) and how he tries to exploit a young rock 'n' roll singer (Cliff Richard).Even if you don't like the film, you can play "spot the uncredited performers." Burt Kwok is in there, as is Susan Hampshire. Carole Ann Ford is supposed to be there, but I am yet to detect her. If you think you have seen the TV psychiatrist somewhere before...it's Patrick Cargill.Some parts of the film are right. It gets the atmosphere of the 2i's coffee bar from which the British rock scene sprouted more or less right. But the show is stolen not by Harvey or Cliff Richard but by Cliff Richard's backing group The Drifters (later to become The Shadows.) There is a scene in a coffee bar where they rock out an instrumental. That's worth watching in itself. This scene also includes some rare footage of Jet Harris's Framus bass guitar. Rock historians take note.