Charlie Bubbles
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| Charlie Bubbles | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Albert Finney |
| Produced by | Michael Medwin |
| Written by | Shelagh Delaney |
| Starring | Albert Finney Billie Whitelaw Liza Minnelli Colin Blakely |
| Running time | 89 min. |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
Charlie Bubbles is the title of a British film of 1967 starring Billie Whitelaw and Albert Finney, and also featuring a very young Liza Minnelli, in her first film role.
The film made great play of its Manchester setting, contrasting the return of its eponymous lead character, played by Finney, to his home city after achieving success as a writer in London. During his return he visits his former wife, played by Whitelaw, in Derbyshire and watches a Manchester United match at Old Trafford, featuring genuine footage of Sir Bobby Charlton and Denis Law, with his son. They are symbolically cut off from the outside world in a glass-fronted box as they watch the match. Finney's character is undergoing a profound boredom with his success and his privileged position, which allows him to indulge himself in most ways he wishes. One of these is a relationship with his secretary Eliza, played by Minnelli (in one notable scene it is apparent, though not shown, that she fellates him).
Bubbles glides around in a Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud III convertible - CB 1E. The car is heavily featured throughout the film, directly contrasting against the working class life and the poverty of Post war working class life and in this case Salford. Reference to the colliery and the gas works further put forward the message that Bubbles has come a long way but that he still isn't that happy even though he now has the lifestyle that perhaps he once dreamed of. Liza Minnelli capturing the hatchet faced old man at a bus stop and the child on a bike whilst driving open top along the cobbled and crumbling streets is particularly poignant. Joe Gladwin plays a waiter serving breakfast in the Manchster hotel room. I used to know your father sir. We're all very proud of you. Are you still working sir or do you just do the writing now? Bubbles retorts No. Just the writing and hands him a bank note. The viewer can judge the meaning of what has just been said and how Bubbles can buy himself out of situations where he feels awkward or guilty. This and other scenarios throughout the film - the long journey North that seems to take an eternity - highlight the strong North-South divide - political and socio-economic - that existed so strongly at that time, and that in certain respects continues today.
The character Charlie Bubbles was almost type-casting for the successful and charismatic Finney in terms of background; he had risen to film-stardom from a background as a bookie's son in the neighbouring working class city of Salford.
Finney both starred in and directed the movie, the only occasion in his career that he has done this. Whitelaw won a New York Film Critics' Circle award in 1969 as Best Supporting Actress for her performance, and also a British Academy of Film and Television Arts award in the same category.
The film is a slightly surreal off-shoot of the kitchen sink drama in which Finney had achieved stardom in Karel Reisz's Saturday Night and Sunday Morning of 1960. The film's writer Shelagh Delaney, had also achieved fame as the writer of another leading film in this genre - Tony Richardson's 1961 A Taste of Honey. Delaney also wrote Lindsay Anderson's 1967 The White Bus, which, like Charlie Bubble's, utilised in part a Manchester and/or Salford background and has a distinctly surreal feel to it at times.
