Expresso Bongo (1960)

Best movie of this year hands down!

the audience applauded

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

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'.

Laurence Harvey gives an agonizing performance in the agonizing "Expresso Bongo," a British film from 1959.A fast-talking low-life agent, Johnny Jackson (Harvey) discovers a young bongo player/singer (Cliff Richard) from a poor family, renames him Bongo Herbert, and brings him to stardom by wheeling and dealing. Shades of Colonel Parker, especially when he takes half of Bongo's earnings. When the singer meets an American star, Dixie Collins (Yolande Donlan) who is making a triumphant return to London, Jackson starts to lose control of his talent.I have no idea what Laurence Harvey, normally a very fine actor, thought he was doing in his portrayal of Johnny Jackson. He comes off like an imitation of Phil Silvers, except when Phil Silvers did this kind of shtick he was hilarious. He's way, way over the top.I watched this film because I wanted to see the young Cliff Richard. Richard was not in this film enough, nor did he sing enough. The speaking voices of some of the other actors, such as Avis Bonnage as Bongo's mother, and Sylvia Syms as Jackson's girlfriend Maisie) were so annoying and incessantly high pitched and screamy, at one point I nearly stopped watching. Richard himself is very natural, not really acting, and he did well in the musical numbers.Sir Cliff Richard was the U.K.'s answer to Elvis and has more top 10 hits than any other artist, spanning a remarkable 50 years. He has the third-highest number of #1 hits in the UK, behind Elvis and The Beatles. He's an institution. And I hated this movie. Like some of Elvis', it's pretty unwatchable. It's a shame we couldn't do better by our national treasures.

Ignore anything or anybody that denigrates Espresso Bongo. It is loaded with period detail and attitude, is singularly risqué for it's time and sports great music and one of the best scripts about England's Tin Pan Alley, wisecracking and inside, besides an unprecedented performance by Laurence Harvey as you've never seen him, a hustler who recalls Sidney Falco in the "Sweet Smell of Success". Maier Tzelnicker is tremendous as the record company executive who calls it "rock dreck". Yolanda Donlan, Val Guest's wife, plays a "Sweet Bird of Youth" like aging diva Alexandra Del Lago who seduces Cliff Richard, whom many called the Pat Boone of England. See the opening strip number when the girls perform a burlesque version of the "Bonnie, Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond". It sets the tone for an overlooked gem. A "B" Movie Classic. Enjoy.

"Expresso Bongo" belongs to my youth.I idolised jazz musicians like Johnny Jackson and derided little poppets like Bongo Herbert.Johnny's ambivalence towards his protegee was perfectly understandable to me as an extension of the jazzers'ideals of not compromising their art for filthy lucre(well,I was only 19). This is the Soho movie par excellence.I'd walked the same streets and been to the same clubs as Johnny on the fringe of "The life" as they call it now.And in 1960 a certain innocence still prevailed in much of the square mile.OK,there were no tarts with hearts,but strippers and song-pluggers,wannabe drummers,agents,bookers,and their like filled the coffee bars and blocked Archer Street every day.It is a world that no longer exists,but if you stand around the "Red Lion" at midday you can still see their ghosts.So this isn't going to be an objective review then. Laurence Harvey was extremely good-looking and extraordinarily ill-used in movies.A ludicrous "Romeo",badly miscast in "Room at the top",sleep walking in "The Alamo"...the list of his bad films is very long indeed. With "EXpresso Bongo" it all came together for him.Unfortunately it was a once-in-a-lifetime deal.Fast-talking jazz drummer Johnny Jackson was meat and drink to him.Skintight trousers,porkpie hat,drooping cigarette,Johnny talked the talk and walked the walk in 1960 Soho. Discovering Bongo Herbert (Cliff Richard playing a mooncalf pop singer) seems to be his ticket to riches,but when Johnny has to swim with the sharks he finds himself outclassed. The dialogue is taut and sharp,the musical numbers(particularly the above quoted"Nausea")rather clever.Wolf Mankiewitz wrote the original show and he had a gift for the telling lyric which is used to its fullest.Sylvia Sims is very sweet and 1960 sexy as Johnny's long-suffering girlfriend.Ten years later she would have been portrayed as a hooker and he as a pimp. Meier Tzelnicker is quite wonderful as an agent who hates pop music but loves money and has absolutely no principles - a breed that has proliferated to this day. Yolande Donlan has a difficult line to tread as Herbert's patroness,obsessed by his youth and beauty and at the same time jealous of his popularity and aware of his commercial value.She is not much remembered today which is rather sad because she had a certain vulnerable brassiness that never teetered over into caricature. Cliff Richard seizes his big chance and is very good in the title role.He is,of course sui generis.There is no one even remotely like him in the world of English pop,capable of reinventing himself endlessly but remaining basically the same.The camera isn't particularly kind to him,leaving him looking oddly chubby and unappealing,but he and the Shadows make a strong impact. "Expresso Bongo" isn't the sort of show that gets regularly revived,unlike,say,"My Fair Lady" which is comparatively cast-proof. I saw the stage production of "Bongo" with Tommy Steele's brother in the Cliff Richard role,and it was frankly awful. But,on that rare occasion when cast and material blend perfectly,it results in a movie that is a pleasure to watch and listen to,doesn't insult your intelligence and is a record of a man at the top of his game exceeding everybody's expectations,except perhaps,his own.