Quadrophenia: Special Edition (18)

“Get me those fucking locations now, or you’re all fucking fired!”

A motivational moment, there, from first-time director Franc Roddam, recounting his bottle-waving bollocking of a gaggle of surly scouts. (They did indeed get him the fucking locations.)

Roddam’s a fascinating case: a plummy TV doc-jockey who somehow marshalled a generation of upstart Brits (Phil Daniels, Ray Winstone, Leslie Ash, Toyah Willcox) and cajoled and improv-ed and corner-cutted an instant classic that still stands up as a blueprint for modern restless-yoof pics.

Daniels’ showpiece take on troubled Mod-squadder Jimmy is a joyous mesh of hormonal torment and snarling bluster. He’s the howling, scowling embodiment of – in old Philip Larkin’s phrase – “the strength and pain of being young”. The backdrop (Mods, Rockers, 1965 and all that) might have fallen away, but Jimmy’s plight will always ping with kids today, kids anyday: love/hate relationship with his family-home cocoon; living for the weekend; too young to strike out, too old to sit still... The irony stings sharpest in his confrontation with freshly matured old Rocker Winstone (“I don’t wanna be the same as everybody else. That’s why I’m a Mod, see?”).

This fresh edition, with exhaustive docs and chummy commentary, throws thrilling new light on Roddam’s make-do methods. It’s the way he mixes evocative locations with cheapskate artistry that lifts the film beyond regulation kitchen-sink docu-drama: the opening shimmer of a sun-fried Beachy Head; churning Brighton breakers slapping against Jimmy’s parka... In the On Location With Franc featurette, he admits to repeating the trick of “wetting the streets” to gloss a little cinematic sass over the Shepherd’s Bush dank.

This emphasis on sheen occasionally contradicts the thrilling sense of seething, street-level humanity, but Roddam also has a piercing, documentarian’s eye for the poignancy behind the solidarity: trembling and degraded drug-hoovers; futile inter-gang cruelty; inarticulate tribal tubthumping (“We are the Mods! We are the Mods! We are the, we are the, we are the Mods!”).

Not that he doesn’t acknowledge the guts and glamour of the clan, particularly in the sequence where the acne-speckled Mod warriors take formation and thunder down to Brighton on their multi-mirrored Lambretta battle-horses.

DVD Extras:

Director and star commentary
Making Of documentary
Location tour featurette

Print