Customer Reviews

Lipstick on Your Collar [VHS]

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The late Dennis Potter knew how to write music and satire transforming it to brilliant comedy productions that Baz Luhrmann can't match. Lipstick on Your Collar is a dazzling example of Potter's brilliance. It features baby face, 20-year old Ewan McGregor (Pvt. Mick Hopper) and bumbling Giles Thomas (Pt. Francis Francis) as two low level clerks in the Army's War Office. Poking jest at classism, rank and intelligence in the military, and age versus wisdom, the young men are seperated from their elder officers by more than just education and experience. A generation gap that would later erupt in Britian with the Beatles, glam rock, and punk is exposed at its sexual roots. Lipstick holds little reverence for conventional society. Hopper's rock 'n roll fantasies move the staid officers to the beat of "Little Bitty Pretty One" with homoerotic gyrations that laughably strip any iota of dignity from British military precision. The boys moon over girls they can't have, worry over the pending invasion of Egypt by old Brits who still believed in Empire, and are the brunt of a conservative mindset that was post-WWII society. Staging and costumes melt 50s settings into 90s PoMo pastiche to combine the Brit love of staged extravaganza with Hollywood Rebel Without a Cause acne. This set of three videos is required for any lover of the late Potter's work. Fans of Ewan McGregor will see the first glimmer of talent that would later mature in stellar films like Moulin Rouge, Nora, and Trainspotting. A Keeper!

In one word: Brilliant! I've seen this video over and over again and still can't get enough of it. The film portays the life of two clerks in the Military Intelligence Battle Order department (MI bracket BO bracket) of the War Office in the year 1956 and spans a period of about 3 weeks. It has a sort of Dickensian flavour about it (contrast between the powers that be and the relatively poor life of the two clerks in Walham Green, Fullham). One of the clerks is mad about rock music, the other one about russian literature and they both fall in love with a girl that doesn't not share their interests. In between MI(BO) is facing disaster as the Egyptians are moving toward nationalising the Suez Canal. At the department there's also an American Officer who doesn't always share the views of the English, which potrays the contrast between the Americans and the English in the crumbling days of the British Empire.

By the way, the first reviewer stated that this was Potter's last work. It is not. When Potter was diagnosed with cancer of the pancreas (I think this would have been 1995), he worked like a madman to get his last work finished, which are actually two (linked) works.

1. Karaoke 2. Cold Lazarus

Both are made into television series. Karaoke is sort of an autobiography (it deals with a man (played by Albert Finney) who's dying of cancer). After his death his body is frozen in. Cold Lazarus is set in the future where scientists are trying to extract memories from the frozen man's brain. It's too surrealistic to behold!

Do you become irritated at musicals and the way that the songs are disjointedly thrown into the story? If so you will love this show. If you love musicals you will also love this show. It is a masterpeice of wit, music and a socioeconomic statement of 50's London. Highly amusing, highly entertaining and foot-tappingly atmospheric.It needs much more exposure and PBS show have bought it and aired it long ago. They were probably put off by the amount of sex and swearing, prudes beware!

This is an example of the stellar conjunction of the British Theatre and television industry that America rarely achieves. The excellent acting, writing and production values on this are an equal to or superior to anything that is on the tube or on the big screen anywhere in the world. Too bad I came to this several years after its initial run. If this were a Hollywood product the public relations machinery would be falling all over themselves touting most of the cast and some of the tech aspects of the series for shoe-in Oscars. All of the actors present quirky, well crafted interpretations based on Dennis Potter's script. I guess the best is the actress who portrays Sylvia. She plays a Marilyn Monroesque beauty with the soul of a dysfunctional guttersnipe living in the attached row-houses of (I guess) lower class London. And although the actress is beautiful she has real, strong acting chops (alright, all you feminists, slap me hard now and get it over with). One drawback about the acting I found was the over the top callowness of the Welsh rookie private/clerk in the "war room". I think it was the intent of the actor, director et al to have him be as bookish and extreme as he was but he still annoyed me and I wanted to work him upside the head for doing so. Nonetheless he does help to make the series memorable. Dennis Potter's script is the kind of writing you only find in a disciplined mind shaped by the theater. He takes after David Mamet, Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard, Simon Gray and other master language-smiths. Sometimes it's a little fussy and over-mannered but I always had a smile on my face because it had a wry precision. A word of caution for those who care about such things. "Lipstick" does have a fair amount of raunch both realistic and fantasic. However, it's the kind of literary, psychological ribaldry that helps highlight the seething dissatisfaction underlying all of the character's motivations. It's the kind of device Aristophanes would have used in his ancient greek plays. So while a large portion of this series isn't for the kids (IMHO)don't worry that you'll be seeing juvenile pranks on a level with "American Pie" or "Something about Mary". You'll be seeing adult pranks on a level with "Clockwork Orange" and better Ken Russell films (if there are any) or such.

And all these words for what, in the end, is basically a mushy bit of musical fluff set during the Suez Canal crisis of '56.

Like all of Dennis Potter's work (especially the original Pennies From Heaven), this shows us what film could & should be. It wakens all the old dormant brain cells. Yes, imagination & inspiration do still live & are still the main ingredients of REAL ART!!! Not necessarily compatible with democracy, tho, maybe, who knows?

Dennis Potter created many of the very best programs ever seen on TV. We here in the US have always loved the BBC offerings on our PBS stations. It's hard to count the number of programs that occupy the top ranks of "best ever", but I'll bet nearly all of them crossed the pond courtesy of BBC.

Lipstick on Your Collar is another brilliant Dennis Potter satire, this time about the end of the British Empire. It ended, by the way, with a resounding 'thud" when Egypt kicked the Brits out of their country and took control of the Suez Canal.

As usual, Potter takes a story and peppers it with oddly appropriate lip-synched songs. A very young Ewan McGregor is brilliant as a young "cog" in the British bureaucracy. He shows clear signs of the brilliant actor we all now know him to be. Potter shows the staid British Aristocracy that can't or won't believe the Empire they have been pretending still exists is finally finished. Potter basically tells them to wake up to the truth and accept the world as it really is. His approach takes a potentially boring history lesson and turns it into a drama that leaves us hanging on every word, eager to see how Potter describes the next boneheaded move the British government takes.

I think "Pennies from Heaven" and "The Singing Detective" are the two best programs ever to be seen on TV and "Lipstick on Your Collar" is the third. How often do we have the opportunity to be challenged by such writing and production? Bring your brains with you, you'll need them. It's hard to describe my reaction to "Lipstick", my brain has seldom been blessed with such brilliance.

When will we see this wonderful series on DVD in a USA format? Precious few of us can afford the huge price for a rare copy of the VHS set. Head to your rare video store or library and rent this brilliant program. Your brain will be forever in your debt. Oh, and just go ahead and buy "Pennies from Heaven" and "The Singing Detective". your DVD collection will immediately become an order of magnitude better and you'll want to see them again and again.

I believe this is Dennis Potter's last work, finished posthumously. He is also known for the wonderful "Singing Detective" and "Pennies from Heaven" (on which the Steve Martin film is based) series shown on public television.

This musical set in the 50s during the Suez canal crisis (you all remember that, right?) is about the best thing I've seen. I've watched this series 5 times so far and loaned it to friends. As the Suez crisis builds and American rock culture emerges, the casts interactions and reveries are punctuated by musical numbers mostly based on famous early rock tunes: Blue Suede Shoes, Great Pretender, Little Bitty Pretty One, etc. Look for the hit Mickey and Sylvia song toward the end: Lover Boy!

Go, buy this already, will ya?

"Lipstick on Your Collar" is my favorite video. I not only love it for the acting, the music, and the gut-busting fantasies, but also for it's central motif that most people surprising miss, namely the different worlds that homosexuals and heterosexuals lived in the 1950s. Most, if not all, the senior military officers are gay, and definitely all their junior officers, particaularly Pvt. Mick Hopper (Ewan McGregor) and Pvt. Francis Francis (Giles Thomas) are of the opposite persuasion. Heck, even the opening line is "Bumholes!" On a more subtler level the movie is an inside, albeit indirect, look at the communist spy-ring (Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, and Company) that infiltrated British Intelligence via Oxford University at that time. This is not my wild imagination at work as Philby is actually mentioned by name (only once) and Dennis Potter himself worked for British Intelligence. Though some reviewers fault Giles Thomas for overacting, I do not. Any English major has a Francis Francis somewhere in his past. Sure, the friend might not be a Pushkin fanatic, but the fellow I knew adored Gerald Manley Hopkins!

Brilliant is all I have to say about this mini-series. See it if you can!

If you are an Ewan McGregor fan, you'll find this video an unexpected delight. Yes, he's very young, and his character isn't nearly developed enough, but his future success in acting is right there for anyone to see--in his bright, wistful eyes, the twist of an Elvis-inspired hip, the twitch of a mischievous smile. When he breaks into song--even though he's lip-snycing--you can't help but be charmed.

The video doesn't quite live up to the promise of its opening episode. The storyline involving the second young male lead is hurt by the actor playing Pvt. Francis Francis, who is so over the top in his words and actions that you actually start to think he deserves to be miserable. Some scenes run a little too long,and the whole thing would probably have worked better if it had been 4 epidsodes instead of 6. But the music is toe-tapping good fun to hear, and you can't help but smile to see grown men, some of them very up in years, singing and dancing around an office in three piece suits. Some of these fellows deserve awards for just being willing to do some of the things they're asked to do.

Definitely worth a look!