FANTASIA OBSCURA: The Trippy Film That Gave Us George Harrison’s First Solo Album
There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.
Sometimes, if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there…
Wonderwall (1968)
Distributed by: Alan Clore Films
Directed by: Joe Massot
There are fans of the Beatles who are willing, anxious even, to volunteer lots of information about the band and their work, who can describe not only their projects as a band, but as solo artists and business people during their time when they were more hands-on with Apple Records.
There are many of these people who will note that the first album released on Apple Records was Wonderwall Music, which predates the release of the “White Album” by three weeks. Many of these people will also let you know that this was George Harrison’s first solo album, as well as the first solo album by any member of the Beatles. A slightly smaller group will be able to note that the album is a soundtrack containing Indian-influenced tracks, George’s last serious exploration of this genre before returning to more Western-influenced compositions.
The number of these people with much familiarity of the film itself, however… well-l-l-l-l…
Please note that there will be spoilers for the film in this piece.
We open in the quality control lab for the Metropolitan Water Board, the agency that used to supply water to London before Thames Water took over in 1974. It’s quitting time on Friday, but the chief scientist, Professor Oscar Collins (Jack McGowran), is still working for a little bit longer, saying goodbye to his colleagues as they up and go.
Professor Collins is so methodical and tied to process, he needs 2×4 cards to go through the steps of what he needs to do to close up the lab, followed by needing to use the 2x4s to go through the steps of unwinding after work. He proves his need of these when he realizes before soaking his feet that he forgot the essential step of removing his shoes and socks first, needing the cards to see what had gone wrong.
He then proceeds to start his weekend amidst his piles of scientific papers and specimens (think the British Museum done up in “hoarder chic”) before he’s interrupted by music coming from his next door neighbor. He throws a clock at the wall, which opens a tiny hole…
…through which he sees the upside-down silhouette of his neighbor (Jane Birkin), a form of camera obscura, doing yoga positions without wearing anything by lululemon, or any other clothier. He gets sight of his neighbor, unguarded and naturel, and suddenly the cards he relied on are of no value whatsoever!
In deep fascination, Collins starts digging more holes in the wall to get a much, much better look at his neighbor. He discovers that she’s a model, and that her boyfriend (Iain Quarrier in his last credited acting role) does plenty of shoots in the flat. There’s’ also entertaining going on, such as the party scene that features the Fool and (an uncredited) Anita Pallenberg:
Collins gets deeper into his observations, losing track of where realty ends and fantasy begins, and the more he sees, the less he knows, because what he does is all too much. The weekend’s shot, and then he calls in sick as his obsession begins to overtake him, continually watching her as though she were one of his specimens on his slides.
In the midst of this, there’s an extended dream sequence where he considers his likelihood that he’d be able to win his object of desire from her boyfriend, which he gets a bit brutal about his chances against him:
Nonetheless, he keeps at it until he’s unable to resist her, at which point he decides it’s time to invite himself on over to her flat…
…which in just about any other film would be a line for the characters to cross that leads to bad things happening to them. And if no penalties are involved, it’s hard for a modern audience to accept that the woman under watch would be all that happy to see some creep peaking in on her, even if she spent most of the film being this fawning idealized object of desire.
Which we realize as we go on that these times are all in Collins’ head, as we do get those scenes that make up five percent or so of Birkin’s screen time where she’s nothing like this fantasy, just a model trying to make it in London during the Swinging Sixties. Birkin wonderfully differentiates the two personae in these sequences, where she’s a real person who’s so over the scene that she tries to kill herself with sleeping pills.
This gives McGowran’s Collins an out, preventing his character from becoming irredeemable. Because of his hyper-nebbish core, which we get reminded of often even as he loses all ties with an orderly universe, he has no choice when he watches her try to end it all but to try and call for help to save her life.
Which we see he does in the press coverage, which also reveals her name, Penny Lane…
…okay, breathe; no, no one back then thought that this was a bad idea, and it’s just too damn late to do anything now…
And with his fantasy now possessing a name, and with that an existence, he can go back to being a respected scientist whose whole voyeuristic endeavor somehow gets hand-waived away because he saved her life, really…?
It’s hard to accept that aspect now, that someone full of good intentions and with a badly focused sex drive could just get away with this. Even if you could walk away from that, which audiences at the time were probably able to, there’s too much else to get lost on here. While Birkin and McGowran get a lot of mileage out of Guilermo Infante’s script (his first credited work) from Gerald Brach’s story, the final fault has to be placed at Massot’s feet. His first work on a feature film, the movie feels like it’s a bad Richard Lester pastiche; it tries to capture the spirit and general look of one of his films, but it never feels fresh enough or lively enough to engage you.
About the only innovative thing Massot did was to convince Harrison to do the soundtrack. Playing on his personal connections, he convinced George to take a go at it, managing to get songs from him during his Indian phase, sometime before he went to see the Maharishi in Rishikesh. The tracks he provided for the film (for which he was credited “George Harrison, MBE”) work to reflect not just the interest in Eastern music in England at the time, but to evoke a character who is operating in a metaphysical state, engaged/trapped in his own thoughts with no real sense as to how to get through them. It’s the perfect score for a story about someone unable to focus who did not properly beware of Maya.
In terms of challenges, the film would face quite a few. The film premiered at Cannes in May of 1968, the same festival that was shut down early because the French felt some of their leaders needed a damn good whacking The film would fail to find a proper distributor despite its musical pedigree, and received spotty distribution for years afterwards.
In large part because of the failure of the film, Massot would not get another gig anytime soon. His next shot at directing would come about years later, when he would start work on the documentary The Song Remains the Same before being pulled off the film in favor of Peter Clifton.
George Harrison’s further adventures in film making, however… well-l-l-l-l…
NEXT TIME: Look, up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s… CAPTAIN MARVEL!
Oh HELL YEAH we are going there!
