My Generation

On Wednesday evening we went to the cinema to see a documentary that James had heard about. In fact it was the premiere of a film fronted by Michael Caine, entitled “My Generation”. It turned out to be one of James’ good ideas, and we both enjoyed it very much. Michael Caine narrated the story of some of the young successful people of the 1960s who cast aside their expected roles in life (Michael Caine had been expected to be a porter at Billingsgate fish market like his Dad) and forged new and exciting paths for themselves. The film cleverly blended in footage of both young and old Michael making their way around London. There was also lots of footage of his contemporaries such as David Bailey, Jean Shrimpton, Twiggy, Paul McCartney, Roger Daltrey and more. They also provided commentary in the form of conversations with Michael Caine but you didn’t see them in their present form, which I thought was quite clever because the comparison would have been distracting. There was plenty of very interesting archive film of the 60s and the music was good and plentiful.

My slight objection is that people who were young in the 1960s always go on about how they were the first ever generation to rebel, and I’m not so sure about that. I bet it has happened lots of times throughout history. What about the young artists and writers of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood of the 19th century? I’m sure they also thought that they were the first young folk to rebel against the grey old men of the establishment. In fact I’m reading a really good biography just now of Isabella of Castile and her husband Ferdinand of Aragon - they started out as very rebellious teenagers of their time (the 15th century) and, much to the disapproval of the Grandees of Castile, they overturned a lot of centuries-old traditions when they fought their way to power. Admittedly not all of their changes were for the better; for example the Spanish Inquisition! 
I will, however give the sixties generation credit for being the “stand out generation” of their time - just not of all time. Also, the film offered no definitive explanation or analysis of why these young people had broken away from tradition, although it did suggest a reaction to the remnants of post war austerity, or to the threat of nuclear war, which I suppose could have triggered a “nothing to lose” attitude.

At the end of the film there was a question and answer session with the great man himself, transmitted live to 400 cinemas around the country. After a short delay we were treated to both sound and vision and watched Edith Bowman interviewing Michael Caine in the South Bank theatre in London. He was very personable and told some good stories, and then Edith announced that it was his 85th birthday that very day! All 400 cinema audiences were persuaded to sing along to Happy Birthday.

As I was driving to work on Thursday morning I heard Chris Evans talking on Radio 2 about how much he enjoyed the film; he must have been at the London showing. 

By the way, I remember when Jamie was a teenager he was singing along to “My Generation” on the radio, and James told him,

“It’s not your generation Jamie, in fact it wasn’t even our generation!” which I thought was very funny!