‘The Knack… and How to Get It’: Richard Lester’s bizarre British sex comedy
Off the back of A Hard Day’s Night, the pioneering Beatles musical comedy, Richard Lester began working on his next feature, which continued his penchant for experimentation while rather strangely reflecting the complexity of the era’s increased sexual liberation. The Knack…and How to Get It, released in 1965, is one of British cinema’s most peculiar oddities, an odyssey into both playful and unnerving territory.
The movie begins with a group of young women standing like mannequins, and among them you can find some of the swinging sixties’ most iconic figures, including pre-fame Jane Birkin and Charlotte Rampling. We soon meet the sexually inexperienced Colin, who seeks the advice of lothario Tolen to help him become a womanizer.
With the dawn of Swinging London’s burgeoning youth culture defined by the sounds of the Beatles and the Stones, who awakened the sexual appetites of young people across the country, and shorter hemlines, increased drug use, and an atmosphere of change in the air, cinema was also rapidly transforming. The Knack…and How to Get It thus sits alongside the likes of movies ranging from the acclaimed Blow-Up to the much more fever-dream-like Joanna and Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush, which used bright colours and unconventional creative choices to depict the sexual revolution.
The Knack is a disorientating film, with Rita Tushingham’s Nancy also joining the cast as a young woman keen to find her way in London, having moved from a small town. There are some great moments of cinematic innovation and humour here, like when she finds herself falling victim to a shop assistant’s flimsy charms as he follows a ridiculous script to sell clothes to each woman.
There’s some odd yet charming choices, too, like the voices of anonymous men and women narrating certain scenes. In one instance, we see the sawing of wood narrated by a woman saying, “I adore a piece of wood, it’s feel,” while another chimes in, “I hope I always get a kick from the feel of a length of wood.”
Colin, Tolen, and Nancy carry a bed across London in another surreal scene, even floating it along the Thames at one point. Lester’s choices are bold and clearly influenced by the French New Wave (when the three travel across the streets of London, Jules et Jim might spring to mind), although the director adds a uniquely British spin, with Tolen embodying an arrogant and cheeky Englishman – easily able to pick up any woman he sets his eyes on.
What divulges in the last 15 minutes is a bizarre spin, however, with a rape plotline explored with an uncomfortable lack of tenderness. Nancy collapses on the grass in a park before waking up and claiming that she has been assaulted, although it is unclear whether she has been or not. When she says the word, the film employs some quick cuts, sending the men backwards, then further back, then closer to the camera again, before Nancy repeatedly shouts “rape”.
Nancy walks the street in a strange daze, singing the word as though Lester wants us to forget its severity, and then we find her laid out in bed, naked, which leads Colin to instruct Tolen to actually rape her, claiming that Nancy has a twisted fantasy involving assault.
By this point, it’s unclear what Lester is trying to say. The violent act – something that affects countless women across the world every day – is hardly taken seriously, and if there’s some satirical commentary on the violence exerted by men here, well, it’s not really working. Tolen starts to panic the more Nancy says the word, but then she suddenly switches her story and claims that Colin raped her, before declaring him “handsome” and inevitably beginning a relationship with him.
What is the message behind The Knack? The movie ends confusingly, with Lester’s playful foray into a landscape where sexual exploration also comes with sexual deviance, creating an uncomfortable atmosphere. There’s little condemnation, making for an unsatisfying end to a film that is otherwise a visually stunning and experimental slice of British cinema from a pivotal time in the country’s cultural history.
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out Beatles Newsletter
All the latest stories about The Beatles from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.