Some People (1962) User Reviews

"Some people have to fight,Some people give their lives,Some people don't believe."

[morrison-dylan-fan · 7/10 · 19 April 2014]

Gathering up DVD's of films that my dad could enjoy watching during the Easter holiday,I decided to dust down some old issues of a UK movie magazine called Empire,and to take a look at a column by genre film reviewer Kim Newman.Along with the re-released Horror titles,I was pleased to stumble upon a review by Newman about a very intriguing sounding 'Teen Rebel' title,which led to me getting set to pay a visit to 'swinging Bristol' for the first time.

The plot:

Getting fined £40 for street racing on motorbikes,a young gang of friends decide to instead pass the time by messing around in all the shops in Bristol.As they start to walk back home (after being bored to death at a youth centre),one of them notices the door to a church open.

Being curious about what's taking place inside,the gang enter the church and are met by the churchwarden Mr.Smith.Thinking that they can mess him around,one of the gang mention that they would like to perform some Rock music in the venue,which to everyone's surprise,Mr.Smith agrees to.As their music ability starts to progress,tensions begin to build in the gang,over fears that they are conforming.

View on the film:

Keeping the movie away from 'swinging London',the screenplay by John Eldridge reveals a very real down to earth quality about it,thanks to Eldidge keeping away from making the gang mindless rebels,by showing each of them to be confused,but well meaning,in their desires to find a good direction in life.Whilst some of the individual gang members sub- plots do feel over stretched,Eldridge smartly places the band dynamics right at the centre,which help to give the title a lively,jazzy edge.

Filmed on location,director Clive Donner gives the film an eye catching,raw Docu-Drama appearance,with Donner keeping away from sets and extras by using real locations and real people,which along with giving the title a non- fantasied location,also allows Donner to show real peoples reactions,as the band begin to kick out the jams.

Whilst each of the gang/band members give terrific performance,David Hemmings stands out in the group thanks to him showing an extremely charismatic energy in Bert's excitement of playing in a band,which along with strong performances from 'old guards' Keith Moore, (play an ahead of its time role of a single dad)and Harry H.Corbett show that there are some people/bands that should be seen live.

Bristolian drama

[nicholls_les · 7/10 · 26 February 2020]

I loved that this movie was made in my home town of Bristol. Places featured included Clifton, Filton, Patchway, Broadmead, City Center, The Downs, Totterdown, The Portway, The old Bus station, Soundwell Swimming Baths, Southville Baths covered over for Roller skating, The docks and The Clifton Suspension Bridge. Set in the early 60s it perfectly captured the atmosphere of the time. The story itself was a little light and seemed like a very long advert for the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme. The acting was all good and although Kenneth Moore wasn't in it as much as you would expect from a star of his caliber, he still stole every scene he was in. Now on DVD it is well worth a watch.

Will music really soothe the savage beast?

[mark.waltz · 6/10 · 21 July 2023]

That swingin' beat of the early 60's takes over in this pretty decent musical drama that deals with British teens trying to find their way off the streets and make success by creating a singing group, aided by elementary school music teacher Kenneth More who sees promise in them. Some of them will make it of course and change their lives, but others won't, too affected by the elements of the street that have obviously already claimed them.

I wanted to love this better than I did because when these young people start singing, their voices literally soar, and listening to them is often like listening to a church choir. When there's music, this is powerful, but the typical kitchen sink British drama combined with teen angst emotional problems didn't fully engage me with real interest towards any of them. As a time capsule, quite interesting, but the script never really grabbed me to be heartfelt towards any of them. A shame because this had potential.

At Least I Know Now I Wasn't Dreaming...

[maneyp · 20 April 2008]

So, this movie DOES actually exist after all! I've tried searching the title for years in various film guides to no avail. For some strange reason, "Some People" showed up at our local theater in Dover, NH sometime in either 1964 or 1965 and I saw it with a bunch of my 12 year old buddies. All I can remember is a scene where a teenager is sitting in a bathtub with a pair of jeans on to get that "form fit" we were all looking for back then, and the lyrics to the theme song "some people think that kids today have gone astray, but they don't know the kids the way I do," have stayed in my head for 44 years. I'm a once and future "British Invasion" junkie and was probably hoping that the movie would feature some of my current favorites such as the Searchers, Hollies, Honeycombs, Manfred Mann, Animals, etc., but I guess it was more along the lines of "That'll Be The Day," which covers the era immediately preceding "beat" music hitting it big in the States. Anyhoodle, I would like to thank the IMDb crew and all who commented on this forgotten classic (?) for restoring faith in my own sanity. If anyone out there would like to discuss music from this era, I'm more than ready to comply.

Didn't they have something better to do

[malcolmgsw · 4/10 · 12 January 2019]

The first thing to note is that nearly all the actors playing teenagers are well into their twenties.This film obviously appealed to Bristolians but otherwise it is going to leave you cold.It is boring and runs out of plot very quickly.Kenneth More,on his way down,appears only occasionally.Was he that desperate?Some scenes are badly recorded you can't hear the dialogue over the ambient sound.

A great film of its time and now historically relevant too.

[SJchapman · 10/10 · 18 November 2003]

I first saw this film when I was 14 years old and have loved it ever since. It captured the atmosphere of the early 1960s perfectly and is a true snapshot of the times.

I can remember sitting in the cinema surrounded by other teenagers all dressed in black leather jackets, tight blue jeans and winkle-pickers. I can also remember seeing countless trails of blue smoke rising to the ceiling, as everyone smoked in the cinema in those days.

The music is also very typical of the time, and I am lucky enough to have the 45rpm E.P. of the soundtrack by Valerie Mountain and the Eagles.

I would love to see the film again, but I have only seen it on television once, and that was probably about 20 years ago. It was filmed in Bristol and I know that the city has changed considerably since then, so it is now of interest not only for the content and story, but also for the location in which it was shot.

I think this film is priceless and I cannot understand why it seems to have disappeared altogether. Perhaps it will be shown on TV again sometime?

tres sympathique

[dsewizzrd-1 · 2/10 · 9 October 2018]

"Blackboard Jungle" film with Kenneth More as an avuncular prelate with a selection of cardigans. A group of teenage motorcycle people lose their licence after an accident. Bored on a Friday night they end up in one of those dismal modernist 1960s churches playing on the organ. The name of the film is named after a well gay song they sing. About halfway through the producers run out of plot and go for an extended shopping trip and then for something to do some activities with the Princes Award or something. The film was sponsored by the tobacco industry and Coca-Cola.

Totally agree; of its time; pre-Beatle rock era (but much more)

[mike-ellwood · 9/10 · 11 October 2005]

I can exactly relate to the comments of the previous reviewer, being of a similar age (by the sound of it). The sixties (as most people think of them) hadn't quite taken off, and even the Beatles were not quite the phenomenon that they later became. No, this is almost a film out of the tail-end of the fifties, and the rocker image is somewhat darker, a bit "James Dean", or "Serious Charge"-era Cliff Richard. (Ironically enough, over in Hamburg, the Beatles were doing some seriously heavy leather rocking, as far as one can gather ... they didn't become "safe" until a bit later :-) ).

I harp on about the rock, because that's how I think of it...the rocky theme music is what I remember about this film, plus Ray Brooks playing boogie-woogie on a church organ! Classic!

I would LOVE to see this film again, but haven't done so since its cinema release (which shows it had a big impact on me, over 40 years ago!) - on DVD, or even better on the big screen.

This film is what made me a Ray Brooks fan ... we haven't seen him nearly enough over the years (though I gather he is joining one of the UK TV soaps (I'm writing this in Oct 2005)).

Angela Douglas was gorgeous, of course, and Kenneth More was, as always, his excellent avuncular self. Brilliant, totally brilliant. (With the additional frisson of their off-screen relationship bubbling underneath).

And as the other reviewer said, I think it would have something to say about the present day as well ... alienation of youth, sex, rock'n'roll, etc :-). Rock on! :-)

Awful Patronising Movie That Reeks of the Fifties

[gjevideo · 2/10 · 28 December 2018]

Although I was 15 when this film came out, somehow I never got to see it. I remember the theme tune but thought it was a bit b-sideish. So I was intrigued to watch it on Taking Pictures channel on TV recently. It had a Cliff Richard's feel to it. Not just that the laughably inept guitar band aped the Shadows but there was a good two shoes fifties style for most of it. This movie was not sure whether it was a British biker film or a bad advert for the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme. The cold breath of the 1950s was evident in upper middle class Kenneth Moore and a fictional daughter patronising working class Ray Brooks and David Hemmings characters. Some the pop music involved was based on the then recently copyright free work of Gilbert and Sullivan. At least the film was shot accurately on location in Bristol. A Hard Days Night was shot just 2 years after this; it looks like it was made 2 light years after. Awful!

Top film about how things were.

[russellalancampbell · 8/10 · 31 December 2014]

It is often said that 1963 was the first year of the sixties. "Some People" perfectly captures the pre-63 restlessness of youth in its quest to find its own voice and style. American rock and roll and leather jackets, motorbikes and Teddy boys, tight jeans (worn in a bath to make them skin tight) and quiffs - not to mention the brothel creepers and winkle-pickers. Man!

The Beatles in '62 looked exactly the same as the boys in "Some People" before they helped sweep youth into a new phase. What an exciting time it was but it was made so much more exciting by the fact that youth in the UK had struggled so hard to be different in the greyness of life after the war.

"Some People" stands up well. It has an authentic feel to it as it documents a moment on the cusp. No one could have been aware of what was to come and so it aims at what was happening rather than trying to give hints about its place in future history. "That'll Be the Day" did a very good job of documenting pre-63 UK youth but, because it was made in retrospect, it doesn't quite have the same effect.

Bill as played by David Andrews - like John Milner in "American Graffiti" - feels like he and his tough guy motorbike culture is being left behind by his friends. Bill represents the choice Johnnie has to make. It was bit like the Beatles choosing to accept the suits as opposed to their black leather gear from their rocker image days. As John Lennon found out, there is always a price to be paid if you want to go forward. Some, perhaps like Paul in the Beatles and Bert in the band in "Some People", gladly pay it. Others, like Johnnie and perhaps John Lennon, know that they will always be dogged by doubt and a sense of uneasiness. Isn't it another sign of what was to come as the band initially plays hard driving booggie woogie and guitar instrumentals but develop into a softer sounding pop band that uses a homemade mini pipe organ to augment their sound? Shades of the Beatles development - perhaps.

Brilliant cameo by Harry Corbett as Johnnie's dad and a moment of prescience as Johnnie plays "My Bonnie" - The Beatles first studio recorded effort albeit as the back-up band. It was used as a symbol of the past as the older people in the pub immediately warm to it. Johnnie's playing of the old standards becomes increasingly tortured as he seems intent on thrashing out the past in the hope of finding a future that is his own. Do I stay and become the despondent and heavy drinking old man like my father - as the song "Some People" says "sad about the song that they never sung"? Or can I escape? That's Johnnie's choice but escape is difficult. Ultimately "Some People" like songs such as "Fast Car" examines the eternal struggle of youth to find a path to a life that fulfils. I like the fact that the film ends with Johnnie still mulling over his future as he stands at a bus stop. There is no easy happy resolution to his problem.

Saw it last night for the first time - fantastic!

[mkh3 · 10/10 · 9 January 2008]

I heard of this film from my brother-in-law basically because it was filmed in my home city. I thought it was fantastic, with all the scenes of Bristol before I was born. It was great fun trying to guess where it was filmed. Clifton, Filton, probably Patchway, Broadmead (but which store?), City centre, Totterdown, The Downs, The Portway and the now re-built bus station. Kenneth More is brilliant as ever. It might have been a bit corny but not as bad as a Cliff film. I purchased a DVD of it off ebay (not great quality as it had been transferred from video) and really enjoyed it. When will it be available on DVD in all its remastered glory?

one of the best of british

[ronrjsmith · 13 December 2003]

I was 10 when i first saw Some People and managed to catch it on TV often after that, a film of the times to copy a much used phrase. 1962, when American Graffiti was released its advertising slogan was 'where were you in 62' well I was a 10 year old kid living in Edmonton north London, i had a sister 5 years older that took me to see all the films. Some People was all about youth clubs, motorbikes, vicars,English rock'n'roll,shrinkable blue jeans! and boy meets girl. I truly love this film and films of its type'up the junction'for instance one of the best lines of the film is 'jonnys got a new fairing' when you get to see the fairing on the bike its what we later called a grandad fairing, not a patch on a new suzuki gsxr's fairing today, i think this film was the main reason i became a ROCKER a few years later. the opening line of the sound track is as relevant today as it was 40 years ago 'Some People think that kids today have gone astray' does this sound familiar? well its followed by 'Well they should know cos they were kids once too' that kind of sums it up.i need a copy.RjS

Black Leather Bristolians

[richardchatten · 8/10 · 2 December 2019]

This was the film in which Clive Donner marked himself as a director to watch having worked his way up from second features, and fulfilled the promise he showed here with 'The Caretaker' and the forgotten classic 'Nothing But the Best'; before like most British directors of his era coming a cropper with Hollywood and ending his days in television.

Shot by John Wilcox in gleaming Eastmancolor on location in Bristol (although only Ray Brooks seems to be making a serious attempt at the local accent), it wears it's message lightly but was dismissed eleven years later by the Allans as "too firmly set in 1962 for much contemporary interest". But like Anneke Wills' jeans it looks cool again (while the driving of our young trio of delinquents' benefactor The Duke of Edinburgh has only recently caused a brush with the law of his own).

Where Can I Find This Brilliant Memory

[nelsonhawkes · 10/10 · 1 May 2020]

Saw this with my future wife when we were 'stepping out' in the 60s. The title song and the 'steam pipe' notes have stuck in my head ever since and resurface several times a year. The little dance routine brings back memories of winkle pickers shoes and those steps were all the rage in dance halls at that time with several long lines if people all doing it to various records. That would never happen now I'm sure. Living near Bristol it has a real relevance. I'm 75 now and my wife has passed away. I really need to find this film it is not only historically relevant as your other reviewer states but is so important to me. I want to show it to my 12 year old granddaughter so she can know how her grandmother she never met looked as a teenager. Thanks for the trailer - can anyone find the film please?

Bristol in its gritty glory!

[TheMightyEye · 27 January 2016]

Not many films used to be shot in Bristol, England in the 1960s. But Some People was shot entirely in and around the old city going out of its way to show the main characters in the very spots they would actually have been hanging about in real life as aimless teenagers. I know for certain because my parents were courting teens at that very time in that very place. I showed them the film recently (yes they're still a couple 54 years later) and the locations were very accurate to life as they knew it. My father actually worked in the Aircraft factory featured. The dance club in the film was the top spot for young Bristolians to cut a rug in 1962, a favorite place for them and all of their young friends (the front door manned by no less than Dave Prowse (not in the film unfortunately), the actor who made good as Darth Vader in a slightly better known film.) Bristol has changed but not so much that anyone familiar with it wouldn't know most of the locales.

Not much of a film really critically speaking, but well cast, well meaning, and well...it's not half bad. If you know the place it's a precious document though of a time and place which can never be duplicated.

What You Lookin' At?

[screenman · 8/10 · 30 July 2008]

This was an excellent movie for its time. It touched more closely upon the growing pains of young adults than many another.

The presentation was very class-oriented, with steadfastly middle-class Kenneth More doing his best (and doing it well) as a single father raising a headstrong (but sensible) daughter, who suddenly discovers the excitement and attraction of a bit of rough in the form of black leather, motorcycles, and working-class amorality. We see quiffs, and elephant's trunks, and side-burns. There is smoking, and rudeness and bad grammar. There's burn-ups and even hooliganism, with - shock, horror - a flick-knife. But no sex, please; we're still British. It's frank for its time, but not that frank. More, the father, trusts his daughter to do the right thing (and keep her pants on). He also knows that it can never be more than a passing fancy; his daughter is destined for some professional graduate type. But he's also conscious of the wasted potential amongst all of these working-class kids.

Although slightly patronymic at times, it still demonstrates the utter vacancy in our culture to understand and come to terms with the adolescent craving for excitement and respect. It's almost as if authorities were themselves never young. The best that they can offer is the 'Duke Of Edinburgh Award Scheme'. And though I'm not bunking that as an opportunity; by 1962 it was already way out of touch with youth culture and woefully inadequate. But what was the alternative to this unappealing carrot? The hard stick of borstal.

Conflicts and dramas are played down a lot, as indeed is the vocabulary. Few familiar faces of the time turn-up in the movie, and that, I suspect, says something about prevailing social attitudes. Kenneth More's appearance is particularly worthy, and he brings some desperately needed and well-acted gravitas to the cast. Despite his leading roles in several big-buck productions alongside some of the cream of Britain and Hollywood, he wasn't afraid to chance his stellar-rating in what was essentially a B-movie. Well done, that man. Otherwise it would likely have been Max Bygraves, who had already tried his hand in such roles and was evidently considered to understand the voice of 'youth'.

The theme tune is particularly catchy. A strange little wind-instrument plays an introduction, and this features in the movie as having been constructed by one of the kids (a cut by ex-Shadows Jet Harris & Tony Meehan is still available from i-tunes, though they didn't cover it in the movie).

Sadly; politicians are more mixed-up than they ever were. Now, with lunatics like Harriet Harman and Patricia Hewitt resolutely destroying the nuclear family, marginalising fathers into non-existence, and feminising the education system, whilst selling-off school playing fields for development and criminalising almost every infringement of law; a whole generation of disaffected kids has arisen who are tragically represented by this movie's modern sequel: 'Kidulthood'. Britain is now officially the worst place in the western world to be a kid. (It's also the worst place to be old.)

For many kids now, it's too late to begin listening. The 'swinging times' have been eclipsed by a climate of uncertainty disillusionment and fear.

I cannot think of any other Kenneth More movie that is not available for purchase. The absence of this one is a scandal - and again, perhaps a telling one.

Anyone else old enough to remember shrinking their jeans in the bath?

Unadulterated Bit of Bristol

[keithgstreet · 10/10 · 13 December 2018]

What a great film !!! I was 10 when this was made so I do identify with the characters fashion and sympathies !!! Great to names like the Glen,The Bristol 188 - Soundwell Swimming Pool including Diving Boards. Marcos Italian in St Nicks market. The Crescent in Clifton. Plus lots more.

Beautiful Anneke Wills

[gabrielwho-44390 · 8/10 · 30 December 2020]

When I watched the movie, actress Anneke Wills was in it before taking part in Doctor Who. What I liked about in her role was her being barefoot in the bathtub with water, rotating her right foot. Also she looked so young and pretty back then. I will never forget that movie.