Oh thanks for spoiling the end of Quadrophenia for me Mark! You could at least have given me a Spoiler Alert!

Can't really comment on the actual content of this video since I haven't seen Brighton Rock yet, but I do like the gratuitous shot of the dude with the LRB at the beginning of this. Is there some obscure meaning behind this? No-one reads anything other than Metro on the tube, anyway.

I attended a preview of BR at the BFI a week ago and talked with Rowan Joffe finding him a remarkably articualte and intelligent man. Merits and flaws of the feature aside it seems that the Mod element and 60s setting were an attempt to tie in the themes of Pinky's misanthropy and fear of capital punishment as this was the last year of the death penalty and the same year as the violent outbreak of the youth quake. that said it builds this on a cultural preconception we have of this place in time which was forged by Quadrophenia and hence lacks an orginality that hinders the production. Phil Davis is great though!

Quadrophenia was quite a key film for me in my mid-90s youth. Mod fashion had re-re-revived for the umpteenth time and all my mates and cohorts were in thrall to parkas, Levis and Fred Perry shirts. I think I became aware of it through, of all things, Kermode's cult corner review of it on the Graveyard shift with Mark Radcliffe (remember that?) so the Dr has a lot to answer for :-)

Funny thing is, I think the majority of us got it totally wrong (or were wilfully ignorant). For me now, the message of the film is simply that youth cults, gang conformity and slavish adherence to pop culture are poor substitutes for spiritual wholeness, self-awareness and self-identity.

The irony of course is that the whole mod-revival sub-culture, inspired and nourished by Quadrophenia, persists precisely to maintain the lie that clothes, music and being 'in the crowd' do matter! One only has to look at the likes of Liam Gallagher and his "Pretty Green" clothes line for evidence of people completely missing the point.

*SPOILERS*





I personally never thought Jimmy committed suicide. The Everyman hero of the film, once stripped of the accoutrements of mod culture and having been let down by fashion, friends and love, ritually exercises himself of his conformity by ceremonially launching that embodiment of Mod, the precious GS scooter, off Beachy Head and stalks away reborn, ready to restart his life...As Mark says, the beginning tells you this in flashback if you watch carefully.




*END OF SPOILERS*

Thankyou! Finally someone mentions Quadraphenia its something i have watched so many times and i remember seeing a picture of Brighton Rock before i knew it was Brighton Rock and thinking, have they remade Quadraphenia?!