Smashing Time (1967)

Interesting facts

Smashing Time is a 1967 British satirical comedy film directed by Desmond Davis starring Rita Tushingham and Lynn Redgrave. It is a satire on the 1960s media-influenced phenomenon of Swinging London. It was written by George Melly.

Production

The film reunited Redgrave, Tushingham, composer John Addison, cinematographer Manny Wynn and director Davis (a camera operator in A Taste of Honey (1961)) from Girl with Green Eyes (1964). Murray Melvin and Paul Danquah, Tushingham's co-stars in A Taste of Honey, appear in cameo roles as boutique shop customers.

Private Eye magazine at the time referred to the Queen and Princess Margaret as, respectively, Brenda and Yvonne.

Some characters' names are borrowed from Lewis Carroll's poetry, chiefly the nonsense poem Jabberwocky: Charlotte Brillig, Tom Wabe, Mrs Gimble, Bobby Mome-Rath, Jeremy Tove, Toni Mimsy, and rock band The Snarks. The latter was played by Tomorrow, known at the time of shooting as The In Crowd, and included guitarist Steve Howe, later to be a member of Yes, who shouts "Let's do it!".

The futuristic art exhibition is held at the Jabberwock Gallery.

The theme tune was sung by Tushingham and Redgrave, who also performed several of the numbers in the film. In the 1993 BBC series Hollywood UK, about the British film industry in the 1960s, the actresses appeared in the back of a London taxi singing the theme again.

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