The 25-year-old writer-director Barney Platts-Mills made his promising debut with Bronco Bullfrog in 1969 at a time when British cinema, having abandoned realism for the seductive tinsel of Swinging London, was thrashing around in the doldrums following the withdrawal of American finance. Only Ken Loach with Kes and Platts-Mills with Bronco Bullfrog seemed to be looking at Harold Wilson's Britain and the dead-end lives of its teenagers.
Platts-Mills's low-budget, independent monochrome movie arose out of a project for East End kids at Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop and was semi-improvised by non-professional performers. At the centre is the 17-year-old apprentice welder Del, who disrupts the monotony of life with petty theft and fighting and hero-worships the eponymous borstal fugitive (Sam Shepherd). Just as he plans a railyard robbery with Bronco, he enters into a touching relationship with the 15-year-old Irene, whose father is serving time for armed robbery. Her mother...
Platts-Mills's low-budget, independent monochrome movie arose out of a project for East End kids at Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop and was semi-improvised by non-professional performers. At the centre is the 17-year-old apprentice welder Del, who disrupts the monotony of life with petty theft and fighting and hero-worships the eponymous borstal fugitive (Sam Shepherd). Just as he plans a railyard robbery with Bronco, he enters into a touching relationship with the 15-year-old Irene, whose father is serving time for armed robbery. Her mother...
- 6/12/2010
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
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