The Bed Sitting Room (1969)

 

100 Best Science Fiction Movies from Slant Magazine

 

#80. The Bed Sitting Room (1969)

 

One of the key elements of the arguments that Charles Darwin presented with his Theory of Evolution (“On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life” (1859)) is that it is not necessarily the Strongest or Smartest that best suited to survive, but the most Adaptable. Mankind stands at the current pinnacle of Evolution on this Planet, having adapted so well over the last several millions of years, and eventually forcing changes, perhaps we can call even those “adaptations” onto the landscape. But as the Theory advanced over the Generations, it became clear that there was a wrinkle within, that those at the top are uniquely vulnerable, because Evolution is slower on the top than the bottom, and those top species are dependent on what is beneath. Big Dinosaurs became extinct after Catastrophe, while modest Screw-like things took over the World because they could adapt better and faster and eventually proved to be the ancestors of the Simians and Humans. Human cleverness has allowed us to adapt by action faster than our biology could, but we are still overwhelemingly dependent on what is below us, which we ill-treat, so it is not irrational to think we could go the way of the Dinosaurs.

 

The dramatization of these ideas, so much a part of the not-very-optimistic end of the SF genre, are often lumped-in with the idea of the “absurd” as defined by French Novelist, Playwright, and Essayist Albert Camus in “The Myth of Sisyphus” (1942), which described we Humans as being at the mercy of incomprehensible systems. Both preceding this writing, and then more consciously borrowing from it later, these ideas became the backbone of much of Dystopian SF, Humanity unable to further change the World nor able to change ourselves to live in the existent World better. These are tales wherein Adaptation and Evolution has stopped for us, and that stoppage foretells our Extinction.

 

These are also essential parts of the Theme-ology of Absurdist Theater, but that Genre’s greats include very few significant practitioners who embraced the SF genre. This is because SF remains rooted int the structures of the Naturalistic novels of the 19^th c, something Absurdist Theater was consciously defying. The Absurdist Writer Franz Kafka might have influenced SF, but he influenced the Absurdist Playwright Samuel Beckett far more. SF is more likely to reflect the writings of Kafka’s Contemporary and Countryman, Karel Čapek.

 

Absurdist Playwrights tossed aside most logical structures of familiar storytelling so though often frantic action unfolds before us, those actions do not add up to progressive cause-and-effect. Perhaps the cornerstone of Absurdist Theatre is Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” (1952), which largely erases plotting and setting and freezes time as two Characters, homeless and desperate, wait under a tree for someone who never arrives.

 

This film, based on a play Authored by Spike Milligan and John Antrobus (first performance 1962), is probably the closest the Genre of SF will ever come to fully-embrace Absurdist Theatre. It’s set after WWIII, and the survivors try to continue life-as-before even though they obviously can’t. Said Milligan of the play-version, “I think man has no option but to continue his own stupidity,” and one Critic (who name I can’t find) observed, “Like Samuel Beckett, but with better jokes." The film-version’s Director, Richard Lester, added that, "any comedy that you would see in the film is for alienation purposes only".

 

The film doesn’t completely work, or maybe it’s brilliant. Basically, which do you like better? SF or Absurdist Theater?

 

After the cast is listed in the credits in order of height, we are introduced to a London that is no longer a city, but piles of rubble with few dazed and traumatized survivors wandering around muttering about the purposes they think they have. There are simple sight-gags, like people knocking on the front door of a house that no longer has walls or a roof. There are also more ambitious ones, like a subway that still operates, it’s powered by a man on a bicycle, played by Henry Woolf, which goes around in an endless loop, but no-longer carries commuters to work, its cars have been taken over by a few families for housing. When these residents go out, they can’t return home until the train’s loop is completed.

 

Like almost any self-respecting Post-Apocalyptic film, it has bizarre Mutants, but they have never been stranger than here, people are turning in furniture, architecture, and house-hold pets, which does not speak well of Adaptability.

 

We’re introduced to numerous Characters, played by an ensemble of that era’s most recognizable British Comics. A sampling:

 

Mr. Milligan is on-hand as Mate, a Postman delivering pies that he throws in peoples’ faces.

 

Rita Tushingham, as Penelope, a girl whose been pregnant for a full 17-months (gee, with what?). She, her Dad, played by Arthur Lowe, Mum, Mona Washburn, and fiancée, Richard Warwick leave the shelter of the subway because the candy in the vending machine they depend on has run-out.

 

Soon, the overzealous Nurse Arthur, played by Marty Feldman (his film debut), delivers Mum’s Death Certificate even though she’s still alive. Dad completely accepts the situation but Mum flees for her life.

 

Michael Horden is Bules Martin, a genial sort, always poking his nose in other people’s business. He seems well connected, his best friend is Lord Fortnum of Alamein, played by Ralph Richardson, but unfortunately Fortnum is mutating into the bed-sitting room of the title.

 

Peter Cook and Dudley Moore are two Policeman, patrolling in a wrecked Volkswagen that floats about suspended from a hot-air balloon. They bark out a lot of useless Directives.

 

Everyone tries to dress their best, but most of the clothing has been reduced to rags. This gag is first and most effectively used when door-to-door BBC announcer, played by Frank Thornton, shows up at Blues’ no-longer-existent house in a tuxedo that’s in shreds below the waist-line; he then steps behind a TV set that no longer has and actual TV in it, crouches low so that the tuxedo is only visible from the waist up through the “screen” and provides the news:

 

“On this the third, or is it the fourth, anniversary of the nuclear misunderstanding which led to the Third World War, here is the--of the Third World War, here is the last recorded statement of the Prime Minister, as he then was, who had just succeeded his illustrious father into office, ‘I feel I am not boasting when I remind you that this was, without a shadow of a doubt, the very shortest war in living memory. Two minutes, 28 seconds, up to and including the grave process of signing the peace treaty fully blotted. The great task of burying our 40 million dead was also carried out in great expediency and good will.’”

 

Then he adds, "Tonight Charlton Heston will wrestle His Holiness the Pope."

 

Composer Ken Thorne draws from Music Hall tunes of an earlier generation and their perverse romanticism and cheerfulness is quite macabre.

 

The work of Production Designer Assheton Gorton and Art Director by Michael Seymour are among the most notable things about the film, but Lester observed that the extensive use of location shooting much-benefited from how easy it was to find convincingly toxic and ruined landscapes within driving distance of Real-World London (it was mostly filmed in a garbage dump in West Drayton). There’s a graveyard of dead cars lined up in such a way the speaks of a disintegrated highway and the instant death to all who were driving on it three- (or four-) years-ago. Pools of weird sludge so large and ugly one worries about the long-term health of the Actors. Mountains made of discarded boots and broken plates. True, low-budget Post-Apocalyptic films often use pre-existing abandoned places, but few do so as creatively as this one.

 

Director Lester, Playwright Milligan, Screenwriter Charles Wood, and Producer Oscar Lewenstien, had all collaborated before in one combination or other, and a significant part of the cast had collaborated with one or more of these in the past.

 

And this proved to be hell for most involved. Critic Brian Doan summarized the Production, “The film ran over budget, and the last reel of the negative was accidentally destroyed (it had to be replaced by an internegative from the cutting copy, which led to a desaturation of color in the finale, damaging the bursting effect Lester and Watkin had hoped to achieve). Worst of all, Lester’s mother died of cancer during the shoot, and he couldn’t get away for the funeral.”

 

When it was screened for United Artists (UA) Executive Arnold Picker, he loudly interrupted with, “How much longer is this shit going on?” and UA’s advertising campaign was mean-spited towards Lester, "WE'VE GOT A BOMB ON OUR HANDS (*BOMB - a motion picture so brilliantly funny it goes over most people's heads).”

 

Wrote Critic Pauline Kael “One laughs from time to time, but, as in so much modern English far-out satire, there’s no spirit, no rage, nothing left but ghastly, incessant sinking-island humor. We end up blank, and in need of something we can connect with, to restore perspective, because this perpetual giggle almost seems to require a bomb.”

 

Vincent Canby “The movies of Richard Lester, the Philadelphia-born director who makes most of his films in England, seem to get worse in direct relation to the seriousness of their intentions.”

 

John Russell Taylor stated it was, “based on one of those ideas which are fine in themselves but suffer from the drawback that once you have stated them, all you can do is state them again, louder".

 

Before this film, Director Lester was much in demand having made film’s both ground-breaking and financially successful like “A Hard Day’s Night” (1964), “Help!” and “The Knack ...and How to Get It,” (both 1965). But this film was a Critical and Financial Bomb, Lester’s second in three-years (the other was “How I Won the War” (1967, an Anti-War film that was bizarrely filmed in still-Fascist Spain) with one non-bomb, non-hit, in-between (“Petulia” 1968, his most critically admired film, but not a comedy like people were used to from him). As a result, Lester found he couldn’t finance his projects and he faced a real prospect of never working in cinema again. His next feature, “The Three Musketeers” (1974) was a blockbuster that did redeem him, but that was one hell of a wait and Lester never did anything even remotely Experimental again.

 

Writer Milligan’s career didn’t even hit a speed-bump, but then he was best known as a Stage Performer, and the original play was more successful than the film. Milligan is credited for inspiring the classic TV sketch-comedy “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” (first aired the same year as this film was released, and with happier results) and that brand of humor can be seen in this film’s best scenes.

 

The film didn’t seem to hurt Wood’s career either, but Lewenstien who was, until then, a fairly successful film Producer, shut down his just-opened Production Company, retreated back to live-theatre and would not make another movie until “Rita, Sue, and Bob Too” (1987)

 

The fact is, Absurdist Theater always had trouble with its film adaptations because the lack of narrative drive seems to cripple all pacing when the medium changes. “Waiting for Godot” was adapted repeatedly, never garnering much attention. When the much-admired play “Rhinocéros” by Eugène Ionesco (first performed in 1959) became a film (1975) and was first disdained, then forgotten. This one, at least, had a more positive Critical reassessment as the years went on and developed a quite-strong Cult-Following.

 

Trailer:

The Bed Sitting Room- Trailer - YouTube