The Knack ...and How to Get It

Released after the success of A Hard Day's Night (1964), The Knack ...and How to Get It is essentially the same film without the Beatles' music. Which means a lot of madcap antics that kooky kids got up to back in the innocent days of Swinging London – such as pushing an iron four-poster across town and cocking a snoot at the older generation (these days the same kids would pop ecstasy, use their credit cards to set up lines of coke and consider a blow job a way of getting to know each other so the older generation were right).

Rather remarkably the film won the Palme d'Or at the 1965 Cannes Film Festival something which should ring very loud warning bells about the bona fides of that organization. Rita Tushingham and  Michael Crawford are the  wide-eyed innocents who are introduced to the big wide world by ladies’ man, Ray Brooks. But don’t worry about the plot there really isn’t one to speak of and really the only thing of interest in this film, typifying the dawning permissive age, is its prurient portrayal of women.

FYI: For an updated version of this film see Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers.

 

 

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