Primitive London
- Year:
- 1965
- 80 min
- 24 Views
1
(INAUDIBLE)
# So what do you want
to make those eyes at me for?
# When they don't mean what they say
# They make me sad, they make me glad
# They make me want a lot of things
that I never had
# You're fooling around with me now
# You lead me on and then you run away
# Well, that's all right
I'll get you alone some night
# And then you'll surely find
you're flirting with dynamite
# So what do you want
to make those eyes at me for?
# When they don't mean what they say
NARRATOR:
When this song was new,automobiles were a novelty,
aeroplanes had yet to fly,
and 67 million men were still to die
in two world wars.
Yet the sentimental message
still reaches us loud and clear.
Man is a sentimental creature.
And sentimentality, like Charles II,
is "an unconscionable time a-dying."
# So what do you want
to make those eyes at me for?
# When they don't mean what they say
# When they don't mean what they say #
NARRATOR:
In a city like Londonwith its nine million people,
you have to look hard
for evidence of sentimentality,
but it is there.
"We are a civilized
people, " they will say,
then they'll be insulted to be reminded
that they are also animals.
Sentimentality shies away
from the realities of life and death.
In our world, 6,000 people die every hour,
yet few civilized people
have seen a dead body.
Every hour, 14,000 people are born.
(BABY WAILING)
Yet, unconsciously, sentimentally,
the first and last facts of life.
Medical science has made childbirth safe.
But no matter how sophisticated the apparatus
and skills gathered around the birth,
the event itself is, in every sense,
a fundamental and unchanging miracle
constantly renewed.
A gynecologist attending this birth said
it was the most difficult he'd ever known,
and he had delivered over 5,000 babies.
All men are born equal,
but this baby will have to fight
harder than most for life.
The first convulsive gasp for breath.
The cord is cut. The last link of the child
to his mother is severed.
Now he is a separate being,
and must, as life is pounded into him,
begin to discover his separate identity.
These feet must carry
him far in this world.
That is, if he lives at all.
(KIDS CHATTERING)
He must tread warily in a society
which seeks to categories.
The lines are drawn,
the route through life mapped early.
The child defines the limits
the adult will observe.
(CHILDREN CHUCKLING)
The friendships now established,
the values set, the pattern for the future.
The prep school will lead him
through higher education
to affluence and possible influence.
A nicely-ordered existence
where expensive gadgetry
smooths a calmly correct life.
The primary school
will make him a wage-earner,
a man with a number.
He has little affluence,
and significance only in mass
at times of election.
But on his way to these ordered categories,
he will find a no man's
land called teenage.
Perhaps he will become a mod.
"Mod" is a generic term
for the modern young man.
likes brightly-colored clothes,
and tolerates mod girls as an accessory.
He doesn't know that the emergence
of the peacock trend in male dress
was forecast by sociologists
after the end of World War II.
Sociologists saw that, in the 60s,
there would be more eligible boys than girls
for the first time in many centuries.
Clothes would be brighter.
And to meet this demand, the male boutique
made its appearance in London.
At first laughed at,
they are now firmly established
trendsetters among the mod teenage boys.
The colored trousers, the scarlet jacket,
none of this would have been conceivable
15 years ago on a man.
The clothes are distinctive,
they are his identifying uniform.
They proclaim his assertion
and his acceptance of the group mold.
The rockers are another teenage category.
They deride the mods' dress display,
but they peacock in their own way,
just as frantically.
Metal studs in leather jackets,
the leather wear itself, the jackboots,
these are just as much
a proclamation of group identity.
To discover their philosophy,
we shall return to them later.
(PLAYING MERRY TUNE)
Another group is the beatniks.
Their name has something of defeat in it.
They pride themselves on
their non-conformity.
But their very revolt
serves to emphasize the norms
against which they
proclaim their rejection.
# Now, John Henry, he was a little baby
# He was sitting on his pappy's knee
# Lord, he gave out a long and lonesome cry
# Said, "This hammer is
gonna be the death of me
# "Lord, Lord
# "This hammer is going
to be the death of me"
(MUSIC PLAYING)
# Young Henry was working on the rail road
# His hammer was striking fire
# And the mountain was so tall
John Henry was so small
# Lord, he laid down his hammer
Lord, he died, yeah, yeah
# He laid down his hammer and he died
(LAUGHING)
# Some say he's from Texas
# And some say he's from France
# But I know he's just a Louisiana boy
# He died with a hammer
in his hand, Lord knows
# He died with a hammer in his hand #
(MUSIC CONTINUES)
(INAUDIBLE)
(INDISTINCT)
- MAN:
What's your name?- Michael.
- How old are you, Michael?
- Twenty.
- Do you work, Michael?
- No.
- What do you do?
- I write poetry.
- You write poetry?
- Yeah.
- Is this your aim in life, to write poetry?
- Yes, it is.
- Had anything published?
- No, not as yet. No.
- Can you quote me a stanza from...
- The only one I can remember offhand is
one of my early ones, and it's,
"I turned right into heaven and saw that
pothead Peter polishing the keys to the pad."
That's all I can remember of it.
Tell me, I'm intrigued, that key
in your ear, what's that for?
Well, it's purely for decoration.
It's me nickname, you know.
- What's your nickname again?
- Jailer.
- Jailer. Tell me one thing, Michael.
- Yeah.
- Do you believe in free love?
- Yeah.
- Where were you educated?
- Berkhamsted Public School,
Northwestern Polytechnic,
and in my bedroom.
In your bedroom? I see.
- Many of them.
- Many of them.
- Do you believe in marriage?
- If people love each other, they are married.
- I see. How about you, David?
- I believe in it, um...
Choice of the two people
as individuals, as well as together.
You mean, if you like one another,
you live together?
Yes. I think one should live together
for a certain time beforehand, though.
MAN:
What do you think about it?BOY:
I don't believe in marriage.You don't believe in it. Would you
live with a girl if you liked her?
- Certainly.
- How about children, would you have them?
I believe there ought to be some form
of contract written for children,
in the case of children.
# I got my brand on you
# I got my brand on you, yeah
# I got my brand on you
# I got my brand on you
Oh, yeah
- MAN:
How old are you, Sammy?- 16.
Sixteen. Where do you work,
or what do you do?
Well, I work at Waterloo.
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"Primitive London" Scripts.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 23 Dec. 2024. <https://www.scripts.com/script/primitive_london_16228>.
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