Thursday, March 8 at 8PM: The Knack…and How To Get It Great Britain 1965 d. Richard Lester with Rita Tushingham, Ray Brooks, Michael Crawford and Donal Donnelly. Black and white. 85m
“Made in a matter of weeks for a minor sum of $385,000, The Knack was assembled with a combination of careful planning, some improvisation, and a great deal of creative freedom. The film retained a great deal of Jellicoe’s dialogue, but moved the action out onto the streets of Swingin’ London. Lester employed an innovative use of the camera capturing candid and unrehearsed reactions of onlookers during key outdoor sequences and over-dubbing their scenes with a running dialogue, a technique he would use again in subsequent films.
Of the ensemble cast, only Rita Tushingham came from the stage production and she was probably the best known ‘star’ after bursting onto the 60’s film scene in A Taste of Honey (1961), which won her a British Academy Award and The New York Film Critics Award. The film also surprised critics and audiences alike when it took home the top prize, the Palme D’Or, at the Cannes Film Festival in 1965.” [TCM]