It starred Adam Faith and it was about the... the London Beats who didn't exist and who were portrayed as a sort of gangster... as a sort of gang, like the Teddy Boys, and you had these fights between the... or set-to's between the Beats and the Teddy Boys. And the only... there's no line of explanation as to who... who are these Beats? They were supposed to be a London version of the American Beats, who didn't exist. So... so, the audience is left in the dark, and they're as much in the dark after the film as they are before, because the only bit of explanation in the script, where somebody says, well, who are these Beats? And some... and they say... the answer they get is, 'Oh, you know, it's that new gimmick from America: hopeless and soapless'. And that's it! You don't find out anything more about them. But that film... that film was directed by Edmond T Gréville who was a French director of some... quite some renown. And he had a speciality. He didn't like straight set-ups. He was always photographing under the legs, out from under a table, or through somebody's armpit, or something like that. Had a strange... a strange idea of what makes a... an interesting composition. But that was also quite interesting for me to watch. But anyway, he was... he was satisfied with my work, and the... and the end result was satisfactory as far as I'm... I'm concerned, and as far as the people that employed me were concerned. And, that was another film that was a sort of lost film. It just disappeared after a while. Until many years later, 30 years later, it surfaced in a programme at the National Film Theatre where they were doing a programme about early rock movies, and this film was... was not a rock movie, featured, because it was the first movie that Adam Faith appeared in. And they found a 16mm copy somewhere and it... it played in that festival of rock... rock movies. And I was able to take it away. It was at the time I was working in the Film School, in the 80s, late 80s. And I was able to take it away and have it copied in telecine, so I've got it on... on tape now. But the other... another feature of... of that film was the... the lighting of the... not the star, but the mother of the... no, the stepmother of the star. The star was a... a girl called Gillian something, who was very young and was accompanied by her mother everywhere. And when there was a scene where she was supposed to strip to bra and panties, it caused about half a day's discussion as to whether she would agree to do that. Gillian Hills, that's right. Gillian Hills, who later worked on a film with Franju, strangely enough. But, her stepmother... her father remarries and he marries a very beautiful French girl, and, I'll think of her name in a minute, the actress. But it's not important. Anyway, this beautiful French girl who is called Nicole in the... in the movie, I did some... some very nice close-ups of her, and, again, I had the same sort of experience seeing that thing again after 40 years, you know, on... on tape. I thought, yes, those close-ups are really rather nice, you know. It's quite good. But it's a very strange experience, catching up with things like that, that resurface out of the void, after... after all those years.
