Flipside 011: The Party's Over

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MichaelB
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Re: Flipside 011: The Party's Over

#26 Post by MichaelB » Thu May 27, 2010 6:25 am

frankiecrisp wrote:I know its only those affected I sent it back hoping the next batch would not have the sticker.
"The next batch" doesn't exist yet, and won't until the first batch has sold out. So depending on sales you might have a long wait!

Come on - it's certainly irritating (as the BFI pre-emptively acknowledged prior to shipping), but it really shouldn't be a deal-breaker. I've managed to get rid of the residue on my own copies.
I have not received a new copy of Institute Benjamenta Ive spoken to HMV online twice since I sent the bad copy back and still get told they know nothing about a recall, I will be phoning once more before I order it from moviemail and write off the £12.99 from HMV.
I've sent you a PM - don't worry: there's absolutely no question of you (or anyone else) having to write off £12.99!

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Re: Flipside 011: The Party's Over

#27 Post by MichaelB » Thu May 27, 2010 12:46 pm

Mondo Digital
Even given the BFI's track record of uncovering surprising gems for their amazing Flipside series, this truly stunning release is laudable for reviving a film that's both artistically exceptional and still capable of leaving a jaded audience speechless.

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Re: Flipside 011: The Party's Over

#28 Post by frankiecrisp » Sun May 30, 2010 1:57 pm

I went out and bought another copy of The Party's over including the sticker and after ten minutes with some wd40 watched a great film, this flipside series is wonderful.

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Re: Flipside 011: The Party's Over

#29 Post by MichaelB » Sun May 30, 2010 6:04 pm

The Digital Fix (DVD Times as was).


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Re: Flipside 011: The Party's Over

#31 Post by MichaelB » Fri Jun 04, 2010 10:32 am

BluRayDefinition.com.
Horrorview.com (very long, and with lots of context).

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Re: Flipside 011: The Party's Over

#32 Post by MichaelB » Fri Jun 04, 2010 6:47 pm


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Re: Flipside 011: The Party's Over

#33 Post by MichaelB » Wed Jun 16, 2010 9:04 am

Oxford Times (scroll down to near the bottom).
Unrated.

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Re: Flipside 011: The Party's Over

#34 Post by cdnchris » Sun Jun 27, 2010 4:24 am


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Re: Flipside 011: The Party's Over

#35 Post by bennybizzle » Mon Jun 28, 2010 11:45 am

Can anyone give me a suggestion on a good online retailer for this? I live in the US and I don't want to pay an exorbitant price for shipping.

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Re: Flipside 011: The Party's Over

#36 Post by Flanell » Mon Jun 28, 2010 1:52 pm

amazon.co.uk.

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Re: Flipside 011: The Party's Over

#37 Post by MichaelB » Thu Aug 19, 2010 2:25 pm


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Re: Flipside 011: The Party's Over

#38 Post by colinr0380 » Fri Mar 25, 2016 11:03 am

"She was the closest I've come to a miracle"
"Because she wouldn't go to bed with you? You dirty little puritan!"

Major spoilers:

This is quite a daring film to say the least! I was a little ambivalent to it at first as it begins a bit like a less accomplished and freewheeling version of the introduction to the residents of the bedsit block of flats in The Pleasure Girls. We get introduced over the titles to a group of decadently jaded set of beatniks (an oxymoron?) who wander in a lazy haze in a group in their partywear through the deserted early morning streets of London, and seemingly across London Bridge where a sour faced policeman appraises them sternly as they pass (though he doesn't do anything when Oliver Reed's character of Moises flicks a cigar butt at him!). As an audience it seems obvious even at this early stage that we are being asked to take the point of view of the policeman in that scene, and see these beatnik characters as rather adolescent types! The film will do a lot more of that once the American fiancé Carson arrives to search out his girl, Melina, who is a part of the group.

Yet this opening sequence kind of plays out like the ultimate version of an early morning post-all night party wander! There's something about the deserted streets, the group ambling along and the beautiful evening dresses that all the women are wearing seeming slightly out of place in the early morning sun that really spoke to me! It suggests a kind of an Antonioni influence to the film (and I'll get more into that later too) but also made me think of the interstitial shots Bunuel does in the much later Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (or Fassbinder!), although the characters there are walking more purposefully, though similarly to an uncertain future!

Amusingly the fabulously chic dresses the women are wearing (or mostly the dress that Melina is wearing) actually turns into an important plot element later on too, so the filmmakers had set this opening sequence up really well to have gotten my attention on and fantasising about the women's dresses this early on!

The group splits off at a junction and we follow the smaller gang back to their bedsit and then we get into Pleasure Girls territory of getting introduced to the various pairings of characters, as Milena rebuffs the attentions of Phillip leaving him dejected outside her room, while Moises who has designs on Milena himself makes do with Libby, who isn't quite as good at pulling off the chic dress look off as one of the shoulder straps of her dress hanging down limply suggests! The hanging shoulder strap on a dress seems like the signifier that films of this era use to suggest a girl is a little bit promiscuous, childlike and not too in control of her life, and Libby's affection for Moises is one of the bigger subplots of the film, with Moises casually betraying her at every turn until he gets cowed into submission in the final scene, in a final shot that neatly ties up the film without dealing with any of their relationship issues (because of the bigger main plot issues that crop up) but which also suggests that Moises and Libby are arguably the most damaged characters, painfully needing to grow up at the end. (I guess Libby finding another girl in Moises's bed at least gives her material for the blues song that we see her performing!)

Also in the introductory scene we get introduced to Hector, the fey landlord of the bedsits, which was yet another thing that gave me flashbacks to Paddy in The Pleasure Girls. Apparently all London bedsits have to be run by effeminate landlords in this era!

The main action then starts with Milena's fiancé Carson calling from America to try and contact her, but Milena isn't taking any of his calls and seems to hate the prospect of getting married and giving up the single life. Eventually Carson travels to London to see Milena but with the support of all her beatnik friends they give him the runaround to try and get him to leave. Unfortunately Carson decides to call their bluff and rent a room in the bedsit himself until he can see Milena! This is perhaps the weakest section of the film, as its all about performing pranks and being rude to Carson (after a couple of pure beatnik scenes we move fully into Carson's point of view for the rest of the film once he enters), although its really setting up the section of the film that feels the most Antonioni-inspired.

While waiting Milena out and striking out at what proves to be the central party scene which Libby takes him to, Carson strikes up a friendship with Nina (who kind of 'seduces' him by asking him in for a late night cup of tea whilst wearing an amazing oriental style pair of pyjamas!), and while he is distracted we see 'someone' leave Milena's room with a pair of suitcases. Then the rest of the film becomes a kind of fascinating drama-mystery piece. Carson and Nina have a happy morning walk together, the disappearance of Milena entirely forgotten L'Avventura-style, but that is immediately shattered by Phillip committing suicide by throwing himself from the roof of the bedsit into the middle of the group of couples gathered below who had been partly seeming to jokingly egg him on into doing it! (An act that calls back to Moises carelessly flinging himself out of a window in the opening scene)

Why did he kill himself, and what has this to do with Milena's disappearance? Was Carson coming to take Milena away the cause? The party the night before is the key to everything and the film itself does a neat little trick of manipulating the details of what happened in the party to match up with the new information being provided by the characters. We initallly flash back to the debauched party and find out that Milena passed out early on and the other jealous girls in the gang decide as a joke to strip her of her clothes ("not so chic now!") and then parade her through the streets on the back of their 'flower van' in a mock burial ceremony before leaving her passed out body next to a building site! There's a wonderful (and tragic in light of later information) shot of Milena underneath her 'blanket shroud' turning and murmuring happily in her sleep.

Then it gets repeated to suggest that Phillip forced himself on the unconscious and naked Milena and that is why he felt suicidally guilty, when she ran off after waking up. All these revelations that re-situate all of the characters are interspersed with scenes of Carson and Nina falling more in love and Milena's father Ben turning up in London himself to search for her.

Then Milena's body is reported at the morgue. Did she die while wandering the streets after waking up? Its all leading up to a confrontation with Moises to find out, and he gives the 'real' account of what happened at the party - that Milena died of some kind of a drug overdose (hence why we got all of those motionless shots of her earlier in the party scene, in which she just looked stoned and decadently motionless with a cigarette in her hands, but was actually dead! There's a fine line I guess!) and was dead when the other girls took in into their heads to strip her! And Phillip did take advantage of her, but the cold, dead, unwittingly necrophiliac, kiss was what destroyed him and led to his suicide the next morning! Meanwhile the mock burial unbeknownst to most of the gang actually was a real one! Moises and his buddy Tutzi (whose character already introduced the brutal undercurrent of death into the film with the element of having been crippled in the Second World War), shoo the others away and try to cover up Milena's death as an accident themselves. And it works, as it had fooled the authorities and Milena's father into thinking it was all just an accident.

That's all mind boggling enough, but then Carson has to contend with Nina's revelation that she also knew all about Milena's death and body being in the morgue all day, which was the big secret she had been working up the courage to tell him during their romantic walks through the park! And it also puts new light on her impulsive plan to just go with Carson to visit her parents in Gloucestershire as soon as possible - less love and more an attempt to escape the solution to the mystery that was looming over them! (And the initial seduction scene, to buy time for Libby to pack Milena's suitcases and leave with them) It says a lot that while Carson is suitably outraged by all of this, he gets over it pretty quickly, and that is probably because he never got to see Milena at all and started the relationship with Nina in the meantime! Moises even picks up on this during their standoff, nastily saying that if it had been Nina lying in the morgue that Carson wouldn't have been as relaxed about things! (Something that also implies that Moises had a more significant relationship with Milena than anyone, though Milena showed no interest in him in the early section of the film, and even rebuffed his advances) And while it is used as a weapon, there is a kernel of truth there too!

This is a fascinating film for the way that its taking something like the mystery-turned-romance of L'Avventura but actually giving it a solution rather than leaving the disappearance unclear! It seems to be taking a cue from an arthouse film then using it for a more youth-film genre piece, but it works really well here too. In the end Milena's death is (damningly) not the most important thing in the lives of these kids. Carson is not destroyed by the events in the way that group of beatniks are thown into brief disarray for their part in Milena's death. Although in a way Carson kicked these things off, and maybe prompted Milena's overdose by simply refusing to leave without seeing her. He certainly prompted her depression in the early scenes we see of her. Everyone's responsible!

We then get the magnificent final scene in the train station as Milena's father sadly watches her coffin get placed into the train and fills out the paperwork (the film seems to emphasise the amount of bureaucracy involved in death in these sections, with people thrusting clipboards with forms to sign towards the newly bereaved in order to return the clothes Milena was wearing (which is the revelation that Carson needs to go and confront Moises) or to sign to show that the coffin is on the train, and so on), while Carson pays his last respects but states he is going to stay in London for a while. Though he doesn't tell Milena's father that its because he met Nina!

Moises then surprisingly turns up and says that he's going to tell Milena's father the truth about what happened rather than let him live in ignorance. Carson tries to stop him but Nina says to let him go, as it is the only way that he will "grow up". We then see Moises confidently stride up to Milena's father but stops in his tracks when he sees the coffin and can only pay his respects before walking off with tears in his eyes. He ends up in the arms of Libby, who can only bleat like a sheep at the rest of the gang as the beatniks walk out of the station.

Its a fascinating film. It begins a little poorly with its overly comic and cliched scenes of beatnik life and prank-pulling, but then does this handbrake tonal swerve into really dark territory from the halfway point that is stunning to witness. There is a point during the intense scene of Moises relating Milena's fate at the party when one of the more comic relief characters (the Cuban drummer guy who threw the party) interjects with a comment and its so jarring that it just seems like its coming from an entirely different universe! Which seems to be the intention, in showing how all these adolescent kids ended up doing some really horrible things!

If I have one criticism of the film it is probably that its demonising beatniks a little too much! This feels like a film condemning the 'irresponsible youths of today' than anything more nuanced! Though within that there are some really amazing performances that flesh out the characters a little. Oliver Reed is absolutely fantastic here, going from sneering and cockiness in the early scenes to an amazing self justification and twisting of arguments to suit his own agenda in the scene relating Milena's fate, to a wonderful scene of pitying tears as he is unexpectedly hit by emotion in the train station scene at the end (I agree with ellipsis7's comments that Reed's performance here certainly anticipates just how good a Bill Sykes he would make in Oliver!). Are they self pitying tears though? For a lost obsessive love of Milena? It is yet another thing that suggests Libby is dumb for being the shoulder for him to cry on though, and it makes those final scenes pleasingly ambiguous. Libby self-righteously bleats like a sheep at the other members of the gang, as if to suggest the whole situation was their fault (they all had a hand in it, but Moises was kind of the ringleader), but surely she's as much of a sheep as anyone else in this situation! Maybe its all just to affirm her head girl role in the gang now that any rivals have gone?

And are Carson and Nina really the 'only decent young people' in the film? The film privileges Carson's point of view and his romance with Nina, but they're left wonderfully ambivalent and inescapably tainted by this whole situation too. The only concrete thing is that a couple of youngsters are pointlessly dead at the end.

I was also amused to note, given that we briefly discussed her memorable acting role in Superman III a little while ago, that Annie Ross sung the title song for this film "Time Waits For No Man". I'm really appreciating Annie Ross even more now that I'm encountering her popping up in all sorts of places beyond probably her biggest role as the blues club performer in Robert Altman's Short Cuts. Time Waits For No Man was also written by John Barry, and there are a few, tiny but amusing, moments where it seems to quote a bit of the Bond theme!

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Re: Flipside 011: The Party's Over

#39 Post by colinr0380 » Sun May 15, 2016 7:42 am

I've finally had the chance to get back to this disc and watch the extra short films now, which are both great and perfectly chosen to complement the themes of the feature that they are accompanying. Both of the shorts are wordless (though there is a tiny scene of political kitchen chatter in The Party, as there would be in the kitchen of any swinging party) and both are accompanying by some great jazz scoring.

The Party looks in slightly rough shape with scratches visible on the image throughout, though that adds to its slightly grimy, late night charm I think! After following a chap into an almost empty house at the beginning of a party we get a title sequence in which the card gets covered by liquid at the end. I presume it is meant to be wine, as drunkeness is a key theme here, or to anticipate the vomit scene later on, but I was most taken by the idea that it was like a horror film title sequence, as a liquid sort of like blood flows down from the top of the screen to cover the title!

We then return to the party in full swing later that evening, with the house absolutely packed with people. After a frantic montage cutting between people dancing and chatting under a quick tempo jazz number, the guy we have been following earlier and his girl decide to retire into a back bedroom for some quiet time. Perhaps the most striking shot of this film follows as the couple are framed in the right side and towards the bottom of the frame as they come together for a kiss against a large expanse of patterned wallpaper. They then go and lie on the bed together but unfortunately the chap at that moment needs to be sick, so dashes off and fights his way through the packed party to get to the bathroom before a surprisingly realistic vomit scene in the sink! He comes back to the bedroom after picking up a couple of cups of coffee from the kitchen only to find that while he has been gone the bedroom has been invaded by many other canoodling couples, plus someone actually tucked up asleeep in the bed itself! Even worse, the girl he had been with is in the corner necking with another guy against the chest of drawers!

The chap wanders off dejected, sits with a friend and takes a swig from his bottle of booze, then both he and his friend leave the party and wander the streets for a while. I had thought that they were just going off home, mostly because the jazz score does a nice change from the frantic up tempo piece into a slower and more melancholy number, but then they both end up returning back to the party. There are a few more shots of the chap getting drunk all over again before as he is about to leave running into the girl from earlier, who gives him the slightest of farewell smiles that makes him leave with a spring in his step! He follows a bunch of other partygoers out into the breaking dawn and steals a milk bottle from a doorstep to take a swig of milk to presumably help combat his upcoming hangover and sober him up all over again!

Its a compact piece that doesn't really seem to be judging either the guy or girl in the situation too harshly for their party behaviour. The moral of the story simply appears to be that if in the middle of a heavy petting session you have to rush to the bathroom to vomit, do not be surprised if the girl turns her attentions to someone better able to hold their liquor in your absence!

The other short film, Emma, is absolutely fantastic. Compared to some of the damage on The Party this short is in vivid colour and looks as if it could have been filmed last week, not in 1964! If The Party appears to have been chosen to appear on this disc because it is complementing the all night beatnik revels of The Party's Over, Emma is complimenting the morbid but also celebratory sex-death aspect!

This film follows a young girl as she dances and plays around in a slightly overgrown graveyard. She curiously explores the various mausoleum entrances and briefly emulates a statue of a praying angel before moving on in a carefree way. Then she curiously peers through the bushes at a young couple also wandering through the graveyard hand in hand (being introduced to sex?). Then a boy of her same age appears and once he notices her, they go on a chase through the graveyard, then play together (Jumping on top of sleeping lion statues! Dancing! Drawing pictures on tombstones! Building wigwams out of sticks, reminiscent a little of Lars von Trier's later Melancholia film!), before going into one of the mausoleums and having a brief kiss silhouetted against the light from the entrance.

Then the film abruptly ends with the children coming across a funeral in progress. They clamber onto a tomb and watch from a distance, and then the film cuts to the young girl's look of sadness as its final image.

This is a wonderful piece seemingly about childhood innocence on the cusp of learning certain difficult truths about the world. The graveyard is made to seem like an almost idyllic, overgrown playground at first with all sorts of nooks and crannys to explore, multi-leveled walkways to run through and mausoleums to enter. In some ways it feels like the best way to celebrate the dead is to let life in and innocently play there! But that full of life innocence seems to be suddenly lost with the final image of being faced with the direct reality of the dead being laid to rest and mourned. Maybe it works not just as a metaphor for one young girl growing up and learning about boys and death, but as a wider metaphor for all of us continually walking the earth where many others have gone before us.

Anyway despite being a short piece, I'd suggest that it would probably be worth getting the set just for this film even if the feature doesn't appeal! (I also got a wonderful sense of The Pleasure Garden from it, and wonder if it was an influence on Emma in any way?) It is also probably the only film in which someone dances an Irish jig on top of someone's tombstone where that act isn't meant maliciously!

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Re: Flipside 011: The Party's Over

#40 Post by MichaelB » Mon Oct 21, 2019 6:11 am

The BFI has just flagged up that The Party's Over is very close to going OOP, and they won't be reprinting it.

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Re: Flipside 011: The Party's Over

#41 Post by Dr Amicus » Mon Oct 21, 2019 7:04 am

MichaelB wrote:
Mon Oct 21, 2019 6:11 am
The BFI has just flagged up that The Party's Over is very close to going OOP, and they won't be reprinting it.
Thanks for that - just popped over to Amazon and see a couple of third party sellers seem to having a mini price war. I'm not going to wait around - about £7.50ish with postage seems very reasonable!

Out of interest - apart from early single-format pressings and special editions (eg The Deep End), is this the first Flipside release to go OOP?

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Re: Flipside 011: The Party's Over

#42 Post by MichaelB » Mon Oct 21, 2019 7:05 am

Joanna is already OOP - although since the Flipside range is now a decade old, I suspect the number of OOP titles will steadily increase, as the rights to many of the early ones come up for renewal (and, unless they sold unusually well, most likely won't be renewed).

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Re: Flipside 011: The Party's Over

#43 Post by swo17 » Mon Oct 21, 2019 11:42 am


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Re: Flipside 011: The Party's Over

#44 Post by colinr0380 » Mon Oct 21, 2019 2:48 pm

"Well I have to find her. I just can't let her rot"

It is a really good release and worth that just for the short film extras (Emma is particularly good!), let alone the eye-opening main feature! And The Party's Over is probably the only beatnik youth film that feels as if it is indebted to L'Avventura!

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