The Knack… and How to Get It **** (1965, Rita Tushingham, Ray Brooks, Michael Crawford) – Classic Movie Review 2910

Director Richard Lester’s trendily modish 1965 British comedy was a box-office and critical success, as the 1965 Cannes Palme d’Or winner. Lester’s appealingly frenzied version of Ann Jellicoe’s stage play boasts a witty screenplay by Charles Wood and trendy black and white cinematography by David Watkin. It’s one of the gems of the British new wave cinema of the early Sixties.

It stars Ray Brooks, whose smooth mod character Tolen has got the knack- how to score with women -and Michael Crawford whose mousy character Colin hasn’t. Colin realises he’s missing out and begs his buddy to teach him all about how to get the knack.

It also stars Rita Tushingham, who plays Nancy, the young woman from the provinces who arrives fresh off the London train. She’s looking for the YWCA but she meets the guys and moves into the house with Tolen, Colin and new lodger Tom (Donal Donnelly). And then everybody does a lot of swinging about in London.

Its main charm now it that it is one of a handful of movies that brings back its sharp whiff of the Sixties to today’s audiences. Frozen in time, it still charms and amuses and Lester’s inventiveness and joie de vivre still astonish.

Charlotte Rampling and Jacqueline Bisset were both teenage dolly birds at the time, and appear briefly, Rampling in her film debut. Also in the cast are William Dexter, Charles Dyer, Wensley Pithey, George Chisholm, Peter Copley and John Bluthall.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2910

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