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The Filth and the
Fury
****
Rated on a 4-star
scale
Screening venue: Cornerhouse (Manchester)
Released in the UK by Film Four on May 26, 2000; certificate 15; 107 minutes;
country of origin UK; aspect ratio 1.85:1
Directed by Julien Temple; produced by
Anita Camarata, Amanda Temple.
Edited by Niven Howe.
A documentary with interviews of Paul Cook,
Steve Jones, John Lydon, Glen Matlock, Malcolm
McLaren, Nancy Spungen and Sid Vicious.
No, I'm afraid Johnny Rotten is wrong: the Sex
Pistols were not the first band to provide anthems for the young discontented.
And their gigs were not the first opportunity for females to express
individuality. But thank God they thought so, because their self-importance
spurred them on, and as they became more extreme, they pissed off all the
right people. It wasn't exactly a case of their lyrics exposing the depravity
or hypocrisy of the British establishment; their outrageousness provoked
it into exposing itself.
Consider: At one point during the group's short
life, in the period of 1977-78, one London city councillor was riled enough
to declare that they would be "much improved by sudden death". When their
controversial single "God Save the Queen" rose to Number One on the British
charts, it was denied a listing, leaving the top spot blank. And who could
forget their infamous live television appearance with Bill Grundy, where
they exploited his drunkenness by slipping swear words into the conversation.
Grundy, half asleep, thought he was having a calm chat; the audience was
outraged.
Julien Temple's "The Filth and the
Fury" is a masterful new documentary about the fuss the Sex Pistols
caused, which takes us through the above events and many more. It's one helluva
colourful history. The title comes from one of a multitude of angry tabloid
headlines, that sit in public record as a reminder of what a ridiculous fuss
the reaction to the Pistols was. They of course found it delightful, because
pushing the buttons of stuffed shirts gave them a thrill, and everyone who
took a stern line on them ended up looking foolish. "The Filth and the Fury"
shows this well. For anyone who thinks violent thoughts at the sight of Daily
Mail reporters or conservative MPs, it's a movie that inspires applause,
and giggles of subversive glee.
The story of the Pistols has been told in two
previous feature-length documentaries, "The Great Rock and Rock 'n Roll Swindle"
(1980) and "D.O.A." (1981). "Swindle" was reportedly manipulated into a piece
of self-exaltation by the band's control-freak manager, Malcolm McLaren,
and most critics rejected "D.O.A." as obvious junk. Since "The Filth and
The Fury" has been made twenty years after the events it depicts, Temple,
the director, has the benefit of hindsight, maturity, and access to a bigger
collection of footage than ever before.
His film sets up a historical context for its
tale, depicting the atmosphere of Britian in the 70s, when garbage piled
up in central London, protests about everything dominated the news, the National
Front gained support and wild fashions offered people an escape from reality.
The Sex Pistols did not solve this with revolutionary profundity, but you
have do give them credit for a dirty and aggressive form of artistic expression
that was much more in-keeping with the spirit of the time than cheery disco
music. Screaming about anarchy and wearing torn leathers simply made more
sense than longing for "Night Fever" over a blow-drier.
Temple takes this idea too far when he cuts between
the Pistols sizzling onstage and such images as the stand-up comedy of Ken
Dodd and the over-the-top celebrations of the Queen's Silver Jubilee. He's
trying to show how awesome the greatness of the band was against the cheesy
culture of its time, but this is the one argument in the film that doesn't
ring true, because we're never convinced that the excerpts we see are truly
emblematic of that culture. Think about it -- you could take clips of a Peter
Kaye routine and public grief over Princess Diana, and intercut them with
a Blur performance of "Song 2". It wouldn't prove anything about the
90s.
This is a minor quibble, because the Sex Pistols'
songs are strong enough to give power to the film without having to serve
as a rebuttal for lesser art. Reviews shovelling the old cliché that
you can enjoy the movie without being a fan seem to have been written by
critics who either liked the music but felt silly afterward, or got a headache
from the movie but didn't want to look square for denouncing it on that basis.
"The Filth and the Fury" revels in Pistols iconography, and if you hate that,
you'll hate the picture.
But I love the Sex Pistols -- their filth, their
fury, their irony, energy, edge. And as long as viewers go without an aversion
to the band, they should find "The Filth and the Fury" to be a work of greatness.
The film mixes present-day interviews with archive footage shot on primitive
videotape, but it's not like every other music documentary doing that --
the audio from the interviews is mostly overlayed over the old film clips,
and so everything happens in our head, like a radio play. The few times the
new interviews are shown onscreen, the faces are in silhouette, and the
photographic style matches the grainy, pixelated stuff -- so we're never
conscious of the film transitions, and the hypnotic spell is
unbroken.
COPYRIGHT© 2000 Ian
Waldron-Mantgani
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