Rita Tushingham

(On Cable TV, October 2021) Even fifty-five years later, The Knack… and How to Get It is still in the running for one of the most distinctive movie titles in film history, a bit of originality matched by its still-unusual execution. At its heart the story of a romance between a shy young man and an eccentric young woman as complicated by the deeds and declarations of a vastly more experienced friend, the film finds its full expression in the way it’s presented on-screen. Eschewing traditional style, this product of the London-centric Swingin’ Sixties features jump cuts everywhere, occasionally humorous subtitles, older people shaking their heads at the actions of our young protagonists, a decidedly odd sense of humour and more time following the antics of its characters than drinking in the atmosphere of mid-1960s London. (And, if you have to ask, the titular “knack” is being attractive to the opposite sex.)  Rita Tushingham is very cute as the female lead, and the very long sequence in which she repeatedly (falsely) claims rape is either hilarious or offensive (or likely both) even today. To many viewers, The Knack… and How to Get It is somewhere in the middle of a line that touches upon A Hard Day’s Night (also from director Richard Lester the previous year), The French New Wave (with editing techniques borrowed from A Bout de Souffle) but also Benny Hill sketches with its character entering and exiting random doors, non-sequitur dialogue and everything-goes comedy. It’s a wild mixture and while it’s definitely dated, it’s still rather entertaining to watch if you give it a chance.