Expresso Bongo

Watching any film 50 years after you last saw it is, at any time, a mildly unnerving experience. A film that boasts the dubious title 'Expresso Bongo' and features a not-greatly post-pubescent Cliff Richard should have provided a strong warning that turning back the clock is not always a good idea but, actually, this was a great pleasure. Based on a successful stage musical and set in the heart of the Soho music industry of the late 1950s as it comes to terms with rock and roll , 'Expresso Bongo' retains a salty edge even now. Laurence Harvey plays a chancer who happens to come across a young rocker (Cliff Richard) who he seeks to exploit shamelessly but who then proves more than a match for him. With a sharp, pungent and funny script (by 50s star writer Wolf Mankowitz) and plenty of night location shooting in Soho, the film fizzes along for the most part, resembling 'Sweet Smell of Success', but with songs and a slightly softer edge. The version on this DVD has been shorn of its extrinsic musical numbers (including one sung by old-style musical promoter Maier Tzelniker that I remember well, starting 'When I compare these little bleeders to the chorus from Aida….nausea!') but still has time for the wonderfully cynical 'Shrine on the Second Floor', as Cliff is propelled into religiosity to further his career. Harvey's weaselly good looks are just right and Sylvia Sims is very sexy as his long-suffering stripper girlfriend. Even Cliff acquits himself well, with just the right amount of ambivalence as to his complicity (including being asked, not for the last time, why he has no girlfriend). In a film where everyone is either on the make or being exploited, sometimes at the same time, there is at least one poignant real-life parallel. The distinguished stage actress Hermione Baddelley here plays a veteran street tart. She has a couple of affectionate scenes with Harvey, with whom, despite their age difference, she had a relationship in the early 1950s just as his career was getting under way. Now, Harvey was on a roll and would shortly go to Hollywood on the strength of his next film, 'Man at the Top'.