(1974, GB, 51 min) Dir Alan Foster. Cast Phil Farmer, Janet Bee, Oliver Basquit.
A strange bit of propaganda produced by Anthony Beckett, the head of the notorious Anti-Life Brigade prior their disbanding the following year. The film takes the form of a documentary following three people – Phil, Janet and Oliver – as they occupy themselves in their day-to-day life while being interrogated by an omnescient narrator as to the point of their existence, the pointlessness of their marrying and reproducing and so on. As a failed propaganda this would have come and gone and that would be that but following the demise of the ALB copies were passed about film societies in the UK and it was shown once or twice television too. Unfortunately for Beckett this interest wasn’t for the film’s philisophical arguments but for the comedy of every point the film’s leads come up with for living being rebuked by the narrator’s doomy stentorian voice, like a furiously depressed Christopher Lee. For example, from Phil: “Sometimes on a Sunday I’ll go to the pictures – that puts the time in.” Narrator: “In the life of the universe the time you spend on earth is so insignificant that you might as well not exist.” There are, so far as I know, no records of the film’s effectiveness.
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