Made (1972 film)

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Made
Made (1972 film).jpg
Directed by John Mackenzie
Written by Howard Barker
Based onNo One Was Saved by Howard Barker
Produced by Joseph Janni
Edward Joseph
Starring Carol White
Roy Harper
Cinematography Ernest Day
Edited byDavid Campling
Music by John Cameron
Production
companies
International C-Productions
& Vic Films
Distributed byAnglo-EMI Film Distributors
Release date
  • 28 August 1972 (1972-08-28)(Venice)
Running time
101 minutes
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish

Made is a 1972 British drama film directed by John Mackenzie and starring Carol White and Roy Harper. [1] A young single mother has a relationship with an insecure rock star. [2] It was written by Howard Barker based on his 1970 play No One Was Saved.

Contents

Mackenzie later called it "a mess". [3]

Plot

Valerie is a single mother working as a switchboard operator in Brighton while caring for her infant son as well as her mother, who is suffering from multiple sclerosis. She draws the interest of Mahdav, who is forcefully aggressive, as well as Father Dyson, who is controlling, but she has little time for either of them. She becomes infatuated with the touring musician Mike when she hears him speak about the unnecessary guilt placed on the innocent by religion. The two make love before he leaves to continue touring, making Father Tyson jealous. Valerie's mother, now in a hospital, complains about her condition in order to gain more attention from Valerie. Valerie leaves her child with June as she visits her mother, only to find that she was exaggerating her complaints. While Valerie is visiting her mother, June gets caught in a conflict between football hooligans and the pram is knocked down some steps, killing Valerie's child. Valerie finds little solace in those around her until Mike returns, bringing a little of joy. Valerie receives a note that her mother's condition has worsened but she spends the night with Mike instead of going to visit her. Father Tyson arrives and tells her that her mother has died and gets into an argument with Mike. Valerie takes Mike's words to heart and seeks to love who she can when she can instead of requiring anything permanent. She visits Mahdav and allows him to have sex with her but afterwards he becomes possessive, insisting that he is in love and that she is his wife. A constable separates them and drives her home. Mike, now in Los Angeles, releases a song titled "The Social Casualty" containing lyrics about Valerie's tragedies. Valerie hears the song on the radio and begins to cry.

Cast

Production

Carol White made the film after having worked in the US. She was offered the lead by producer Joseph Janni who had worked with her on Poor Cow. White was excited by the film because she identified with the lead character. She says Janni offered her the choice of Roy Harper or Tony Joe White for the lead and selected Harper because Tony was American. The director was John Mackenzie who had been Ken Loach's floor manager on Cathy Come Home and Up the Junction which both starred White. White and Harper had an affair during the making of the film; White also had affairs with Oliver Reed. [4]

"The story is set in London but its happening throughout the world," said producer Joseph Janni. "Young people, searching for values, something to believe in. Some look in nearly empty churches, others in the pop world or among Jesus freaks. But who really has the answers?" [5]

Writer Howard Barker called it " a disastrous and painful experience which exposed to me the commercial degradation of the industry here, as far as the studios are concerned." [6]

Soundtrack

The film featured excerpts from Harper's songs "The Lord's Prayer", a live excerpt from "Highway Blues", a live session of "Little Lady" and "Bank of the Dead" (a.k.a. "The Social Casualty" and "Valerie's Song") sung with alternative lyrics.

Some of the dialogue from a scene in the film is featured as a sample in the beginning of Saint Etienne's 1993 song Hobart Paving .

Reception

The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "Attempting to invest social problems with personal immediacy, Made unfortunately short-circuits any possible sympathy by the jejune air of its drama. Its people never seem too far removed from statistics, or at least the conventional assumptions that can be drawn from statistics, while their dramatic environment seems to have been put together from the worst clichés of the old Free Cinema movement. The strains of the hymn "Jerusalem", and the switches in mood from brief moments of circumscribed happiness to the abrupt retribution of crushing guilts, sum up the atmosphere of the film with almost nostalgic banality, leaving the characters hopelessly stranded between outworn conventions and the static distortions of thumbnail sketches from a social worker's casebook." [7]

Variety wrote: "Virtually downbeat all the way, with few if any smiles granted a hangdog Miss White, pic is burdened by unhappy dialogue, a cluttered script into which too many thematics are superficially cramped, and a disjointed construction which jumps around from one predictable development to another." [8]

Sight and Sound wrote "Sociological pertinence and melodramatic decline and fall offset one another to poor advantage." [9]

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References

  1. ↑ "Made". British Film Institute Collections Search. Retrieved 26 December 2024.
  2. ↑ "Made (1972) – John Mackenzie | Synopsis, Characteristics, Moods, Themes and Related | AllMovie".
  3. ↑ Farquhar, Simon (16 June 2011). "John Mackenzie". The Independent. p. 58.
  4. ↑ White, Carol (1982). Carol comes home. p. 241-250.
  5. ↑ A Sad Jerry L.: A Sad Jerry Lewis By A. H. WEILER. New York Times 7 November 1971: D9.
  6. ↑ New theatre voices of the seventies : sixteen interviews from Theatre quarterly, 1970-1980. Eyre Methuen. 1981. p. 189.
  7. ↑ "Made" . The Monthly Film Bulletin . 39 (456): 191. 1 January 1972 – via ProQuest.
  8. ↑ "Made" . Variety . 268 (5): 20. 13 September 1972 – via ProQuest.
  9. ↑ "Film guide". Sight and Sound. Winter 1972. p. 69.
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