| 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 |
Charlie Bubbles is a British film of 1967 starring Billie Whitelaw and Albert Finney, and also featuring a young Liza Minnelli. It was listed to compete at the 1968 Cannes Film Festival,[1] but the festival was cancelled due to the events of May 1968 in France.
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 footage of Bobby Charlton and Denis Law with his son. They are cut off from the outside world in a glass-fronted box as they watch the match. Finney's character is bored 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 gets a good look at him).
Bubbles glides around in a Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud III convertible - CB 1E, contrasted with the working class life and the poverty of post war 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. 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 Manchester 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. This scene and others highlight the North-South divide - political and economic - that exists in Britain.
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, mainly working class City of Salford.
Finney starred in and directed the movie for the only time. For her performance, Whitelaw won the 1968 British Academy of Film and Television Arts award for Best Supporting Actress
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 film in this genre - Tony Richardson's 1961 A Taste of Honey. Delaney also wrote Lindsay Anderson's 1967 film The White Bus like Charlie Bubbles, set in part in Manchester and Salford, which has a distinctly surreal feel to it at times.
Charlie Bubbles is referred to in The Kinks song "Where are they now?", on the album Preservation Act 1.
The film was released on DVD in September 2008.
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