chew very much

I posted about this film Charlie Bubbles (1967) once before in a Hardly Baked series called "Odd Little Films" which only got to one post before sputtering out. The idea was that it was to be a celebration of the sort of movies that - while they may be minor or even not very good -  linger in your memory. It might even be for just one or two scenes. They stay with you longer and more plangently than the sort of films that are well-made, obviously excellent, have a message or a point, etc etc. . 

In this long-ago post, I lamented not being able to find online a particular clip from it that I had never forgotten and whose "naturalism" seemed very striking. 

Albert Finney directed the film as well as playing the titular character: a Northern working-class best-selling novelist (probably modelled on Keith Waterhouse or Alan Sillitoe, someone like that). In the scene in question. Bubbles is gone back to his hometown (Manchester clearly, although I don't think it's ever said) to visit his young son and his ex-wife (played by Billie Whitelaw - wonderfully cross, tenderness glinting out through the sternness despite herself). He's left them comfortably off, so they live out in the countryside now - she's into keeping chickens and free range, organic stuff, making jams etc. She  keeps a good table and, noticing that Bubbles is looking a bit sallow and under the weather,  fixes up some hearty grub in the farmhouse kitchen.  Finney munches away at this big bacon sandwich and there is a protracted stretch of chewing that goes on for about two whole minutes. Although his mouth is full he keeps taking big bites out of the sarny - it's a thick home-baked bread and he's masticating away,  hamster-cheeked. The shot even follows through to him cleaning out his molars with his tongue for those clingy bits of granary crust and bacon rind.

Well, after that big build-up, now you can see this scene! At 1.04.17

From Angry Young Man to... Hungry Middle Aged Man

Another good scene - which immediately follows the Protracted Chew - is when Bubbles takes his little boy to Old Trafford to watch a football match. Being a celebrity bestselling novelist, a hometown lad made very good indeed, he's given the red carpet treatment - he and his son, decked out in football fan regalia, are ushered to a director's box, with bird's eye view. But it's remote and insulated from the crowd fervour of the stands, which is where the boy would much rather be. It's a poignant little scene. 

I really like the whole film -  the delicate balance maintained between quirky and gloomy.  The atmosphere is soaked in the ennui of the novelist, who's got everything he ever wanted (money, acclaim, fame, a swanky ultra-modern pad in London) but lost what he had. There's an of-its-time blend of realism and surrealism to Charlie Bubbles that sits it competitively alongside Blow-Up (also about an archetypally Sixties figure  of working class success - in this case, the Bailey-style star photographer - for whom the striving and the spoils alike become meaningless).