Beat Girl

'Beat' Girl is a 1960 British teen drama exploitation film directed by Edmond T. Gréville. The film was released in the United States under the title Wild for Kicks.[2]

Beat Girl
UK film poster
Directed byEdmond T. Gréville
Screenplay byDail Ambler
Produced byGeorge Willoughby
Starring
CinematographyWalter Lassally
Edited byGordon Pilkington
Music by
Production
company
Willoughby Film Productions
Distributed byRenown Pictures
Release date
28 October 1960
Running time
87 minutes
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
Budget£79,840[1]

The title character of Beat Girl was played by starlet Gillian Hills, who later went on to have numerous small roles in 1960s and 1970s films, such as Blowup (1966) and A Clockwork Orange (1971), and became a successful "ye-ye" singer in France.[3][4][5][6] Beat Girl marked the first film roles of British pop idol Adam Faith and actor Peter McEnery, although it was not released until after other films featuring Faith (Never Let Go (1960))[7] and McEnery (Tunes of Glory (1960))[8] had already come out. The film also features Christopher Lee and Nigel Green as strip joint operators, and Oliver Reed in a small role as one of the "beat" youth.

The original music was composer John Barry's first film commission, and was performed by the John Barry Seven and Orchestra, Adam Faith, and Shirley Anne Field.[9][10][11] The Beat Girl soundtrack was the first British soundtrack to be released on a vinyl LP.[12] It reached number 11 on the UK Albums Chart, paving the way for the release of other film soundtrack albums.[10][13]

Plot

Paul Linden, a wealthy and prominent middle-aged architect, returns home to Kensington, London. Previously divorced, he brings his new wife: beautiful, French, 24-year-old Nichole, whom he has just married in Paris. He is anxious to introduce Nichole to his teenage daughter Jennifer, but she is resentful of her father's remarriage and coldly rejects Nichole's friendly overtures all evening. After Paul and Nichole go to bed, Jennifer sneaks out to the Off-Beat café in Soho for an evening of rock music and dancing with her friends, including Dave, a youth from a working-class background who plays the guitar and writes songs; Tony, a general's son whose mother was killed in the Blitz and who has a drinking problem (although beatniks frown on alcohol); and Dodo, Tony's well-bred girlfriend. Dave and Jennifer are attracted to each other.

The next day Nichole plans to meet Jennifer at Saint Martin's School of Art, where she is studying, so they can have lunch together. At lunchtime, Nichole arrives at St Martin's, but is told that Jennifer has left and gone to the Off-Beat. Nichole goes to the café and confronts Jennifer in front of her friends, who are impressed by Nichole's youth, good looks, and knowledge of modern jazz. The fact that her friends, especially Dave, like Nichole upsets Jennifer. Nichole leaves, reminding Jennifer to be home for her father's important business dinner that night. As Nichole leaves, she passes Greta, the star performer at the strip club across the street. Greta recognises Nichole and greets her by name, but Nichole ignores her, to Greta's annoyance. Jennifer and her friends see this encounter and wonder how Greta and Nichole might know each other. Jennifer suspects that Nichole was also a stripper before meeting her father.

That night at Paul's business dinner, Jennifer tries to embarrass Nichole in front of the guests by bringing up the encounter with Greta, making sure to emphasise that Greta is a stripper. After the guests leave, Paul questions Nichole, who says that she knew Greta in Paris and that they were in ballet together but Greta pursued a different way of life and Nichole lost track of her. Paul accepts her explanation, but Jennifer goes to the strip club to ask Greta directly. Greta at first claims she made a mistake and does not really know Nichole, but under pressure from her boyfriend, strip club manager Kenny King, she reveals that she and Nichole worked together as strippers and occasional prostitutes in Paris. Jennifer, encouraged by Kenny, becomes enamoured with the idea of becoming a stripper herself. Jennifer is caught by Paul and Nichole coming home from the strip club at 3 am and an angry confrontation results. Jennifer taunts Nichole by telling her she has spoken with Greta and threatens that if Nichole does not stay out of her life, Jennifer will tell Paul about Nichole's background. Nichole visits the strip club to tell Kenny and Greta to stay away from her stepdaughter, but Kenny says that Jennifer will be welcome at the club any time and that if Nichole interferes he will tell Paul about her past.

Jennifer and her friends have a wild night including dancing at Chislehurst Caves, a dangerous car race, and a game of chicken on railway tracks where the last person to leave the rails before the train arrives (Jennifer) wins. Throughout the evening, Jennifer and Dave dare each other to increasingly dangerous behaviours as a way of flirting. Jennifer invites everyone to continue the party at her house, as her father is out of town and Nichole presumably will not interfere for fear Jennifer will reveal her past. Jennifer accepts a dare to "strip like a Frenchie" and begins a striptease to music, but when she gets down to her underwear Nichole bursts from her bedroom and stops her. Then Paul suddenly arrives home and breaks up the party, throwing all of the beatniks out of his house including Dave. Jennifer angrily tells her father about Nichole's activities in Paris. Nichole, crying, admits it is true and explains she only did it because she was broke and hungry. Paul and Nichole profess their love for each other and reconcile.

Jennifer goes to the café, but now finds it boring. She walks out on her friends and meets Kenny across the street at the strip club. Kenny invites her to go to Paris with him and have him train her to be a star stripper. Greta, performing onstage, is told by stage manager Simon that Kenny plans to leave her and go off with Jennifer. Just as Kenny makes a pass at Jennifer, a woman's hand is shown stabbing Kenny to death with a letter opener. The club staff, thinking Jennifer killed Kenny, lock her in the room and call the police. Jennifer screams that she didn't do it, and the real culprit, jealous Greta, emerges from behind a curtain. Meanwhile, Dave, Tony and Dodo confront some Teddy Boys who vandalise Tony's car and smash his guitar. Paul and Nichole arrive on the scene searching for Jennifer just as the police drag her, in hysterics, out of the strip club. The police release Jennifer to Paul and Nichole, and they head for home, arms around each other, as Dave throws his broken guitar in a rubbish bin and proclaims "Funny, only squares know where to go."

Cast

Production

Music

After Adam Faith was cast, John Barry was asked to compose the film soundtrack, because he had already been collaborating with Faith as an arranger.[14] Barry was subsequently hired to score Faith's next films, Never Let Go (1960) and Mix Me a Person (1962), leading to Barry's successful career as a composer and arranger of film music. In addition to the Beat Girl soundtrack LP reaching number 11 in the album charts, the song "Made You," composed by John Barry and Trevor Peacock and performed in the film by Faith, achieved minor hit status before being banned by the BBC for suggestive lyrics.[15] A sample from the title track is used in "The Rockafeller Skank," a 1998 single by Fatboy Slim, for which Barry receives a co-writer credit.

Filming

The movie was filmed at MGM-British Studios at Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, UK, with exteriors filmed in Soho and Chislehurst Caves (then in Kent).[7]

Pascaline, the Haitian exotic dancer who appears in a sequence performing with a scarf, had performed in real life as an exotic dancer at the Crazy Horse Saloon in Paris.[16]

Release

Some versions of the released film have cut the original striptease sequences (which included topless nudity), some exposition scenes set in the strip club, the "chicken" game scene, and/or some opening exposition scenes with David Farrar and Noëlle Adam on a train and then with Gillian Hills at their London home.

Censorship

When the original script, entitled "Striptease Girl," was submitted to the British Board of Film Censors in March 1959, the reviewer termed it "machine-made dirt" and "the worst script I have read for some years". The project was then renamed "Beat Girl" and nudity was reduced, but censors still objected to scenes of strip tease, juvenile delinquency, and teenagers playing "chicken" by lying on railway tracks in front of an oncoming train. Ultimately, the film received an "X" certificate, causing its release to be delayed because it was queued behind a glut of other X-rated films.[7][17]

Critical reception

The film was bought for distribution by Victoria Films and did "exceptionally well" playing over 1,000 theatres, [18][19] despite receiving bad reviews.[13]

Kine Weekly wrote: "JEAN-AGE melodrama, with songs. Set mainly in Soho, it's about a self-willed fifteen-year-old beatnik daughter of a successful architect, who resents her father's pretty French second wife and decides to live for kicks, but soon gets into hot water and, chastened, returns lo the old nest. The tale is not particularly original, but the principal adults' and teenagers' performances are first-class, the list of ”cool” guest artists stretches as long as your arm, and the numbers head the current hit parade. And that's not all. the film's musical score, played by topnotch John Barry and his Orchestra and sung by Shirley Ann Field and Adam Faith, is the first to be recorded in its entirety on a long-playing disc. Pre-sold, the opus can hardly miss. Outstanding British gimmick offering"[20]

Variety said: "Cheap little dualer about a London kid who gets mixed up with beatniks, striptease, murder and problems with her father and stepmother; may click with undiscriminating audiences."[21]

Leslie Halliwell called the film a "Risible expose-style melodrama."[22]

The Radio Times Guide to Films gave the film 2/5 stars, writing: "[this] failed attempt to launch Adam Faith as yet another of Britain's answers to Elvis Presley is now a great pop history lesson in teenage attitudes and rock 'n' roll rebellion, complete with cool jive talk and swinging sounds."[23]

Sight and Sound said: "Beat Girl evidently has one eye on US product such as Rebel Without a Cause, offering a largely studio set, mock ethnographic survey of the new teenage tribe frequenting Soho coffee bars and basement clubs, playing chicken on country roads and talking in a brand new argot (“Straight from the fridge, dad!"), which screenwriter Dail Ambler quite possibly made up for the occasion. It's a film as flummoxed as super-square patriarch David Farrar's permanently creased brow, which perhaps explains why the producers hedged their bets by situating a striptease show across the street from the kids' espresso stop, allowing extensive onstage footage to be tailored for various export versions. [...] Like so much British cinema of the time, It's a muddled yet fascinating affair, which somehow manages to look to the future in spite of itself."[24]

Further reading
  • Caine, Andrew. Interpreting Rock Movies: The Pop Film and Its Critics in Britain. Manchester Univ. Press, 2004. ISBN 0-7190-6538-0.
  • Glynn, Stephen. The British Pop Music Film: The Beatles and Beyond. Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. ISBN 978-0-230-39222-9.

References
  1. Chapman, J. (2022). The Money Behind the Screen: A History of British Film Finance, 1945-1985. Edinburgh University Press p 359
  2. "Beat Girl". British Film Institute Collections Search. Retrieved 21 October 2023.
  3. Deluxe, Jean-Emmanuel, Ye-Ye Girls of '60s French Pop. Feral House, 2013. ISBN 9781936239726.
  4. Gallagher, Paul. "Gillian Hills: Keeping Time With the Beat Girl." dangerousminds.net, 28 June 2011, accessed 12 Mar. 2015.
  5. Cotter, Robert Michael "Bobb". The Women of Hammer Horror: A Biographical Dictionary and Filmography. McFarland & Co., 2013, p. 102. ISBN 978-0-7864-7208-6.
  6. Hennessey, Mike. "News from the Music Capitals of the World: Paris." Billboard, 3 Apr. 1965, p. 22.
  7. Glynn, Stephen. The British Pop Music Film: The Beatles and Beyond. Palgrave MacMillan, 2013, p. 40. ISBN 978-0-230-39222-9.
  8. According to the Internet Movie Database, Tunes of Glory in which McEnery played "2nd. Lt. David MacKinnon" was released in UK in August 1960, while Beat Girl, in which McEnery made his cinema film debut, was released in Finland and West Germany on 9 Sept. 1960, and in UK on 28 October 1960.
  9. Perone, James E. Mods, Rockers, and the Music of the British Invasion. Praeger Publishers, 2009, p.31. ISBN 978-0-275-99860-8.
  10. Fiegel, Eddi. John Barry: A Sixties Theme: From James Bond to Midnight Cowboy. Faber & Faber, 2012, p. 71-72.
  11. Davis, Sharon. Every Chart Topper Tells a Story. Mainstream Pubs. Co., 1997, p. 1912. ISBN 1-85158-836-1.
  12. Film music had been released on shellac 78s as far back at Things to Come in 1936.
  13. Glynn, S. (7 May 2013). The British Pop Music Film: The Beatles and Beyond. Springer. p. 41. ISBN 9780230392236. Retrieved 18 December 2018 – via Google Books.
  14. Wood, Arlene. "Beat Girl – VideoVista". Retrieved 18 December 2018.
  15. Fiegel, p. 72-73.
  16. "Pascaline". IMDb.com. Retrieved 18 December 2018.
  17. Fiegel, p. 72.
  18. OBSERVATIONS FROM A LOCAL VANTAGE POINT By A.H. WEILER. New York Times 14 Oct 1962: 131.
  19. Weiler, A. H. (14 October 1962). "OBSERVATIONS FROM A LOCAL VANTAGE POINT (Published 1962)". The New York Times.
  20. "Beat Girl". Kine Weekly. 521 (2766): 9. 6 October 1960 – via ProQuest.
  21. "Beat Girl". Variety. 220 (12): 6. 16 November 1960.
  22. Halliwell, Leslie (1989). Halliwell's Film Guide (7th ed.). London: Paladin. p. 82. ISBN 0-586-08894-6.
  23. Radio Times Guide to Films (18th ed.). London: Immediate Media Company. 2017. p. 76. ISBN 9780992936440.
  24. Johnston, Trevor (June 2016). "British 'Teenager' Films". Sight and Sound. 26 (6): 96.
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