Privilege

 Year:  1967

Director:  Peter Watkins

Screenplay:  Norman Bogner, from a story by John Speight

Starring:  Peter Jones, Jean Shrimpton, Mark London, Jeremy Child

Running Time:  103 minutes

Genre:  Comedy, drama, science-fiction, satire, 

Britain, the near future:  The country is ruled by an authoritarian coalition Government.  The biggest celebrity in the world is pop singer Steven Shorter (Jones), whose ruthless management have made a deal with the government to use Steven as a tool to keep the people in line.  When Steven meets sympathetic artist Vanessa (Shrimpton) he begins to see the need to rebel.

Director Peter Watkins made his name with the 1964 TV movie Culloden which depicted the 1746 Battle of Culloden in the style of modern TV news reportage, and the controversial 1966 TV film The War Game, about nuclear war, which was deemed so disturbing that the BBC refused to broadcast it.  Like Watkins' previous works Privilege is made as a pseudo-documentary following futuristic pop singer Steven Shorter.  Played by Manfred Mann lead singer Paul Jones, Steven is a shrunken, quiet, haunted figure, notably lacking in charisma, who is surrounded by people who pretend to care about him, but really just want to exploit him.  Jean Shrimpton's Vanessa, ironically the only one, initially, who couldn't care less about Steven Shorter, avoids the oily, slick media and political types to become the only one who really does care about him.  This is a horribly dated film, which screams late sixties in almost every frame, but it is funny (particularly a scene involving the filming of an advert to promote apples and the director calls: "I want you all to think like apples, act like apples, be apples!"), and frightening in it's depiction of government control of mass media to hypnotise and control the people.  It is certainly ripe for a remake.

Arthur Pentelow and Paul Jones in Privilege