Director Jerzy Skolimowski with Jane Asher and John Moulder Brown

There were times in this film when I wondered if I were watching soft porn. I don’t think so (but how would I know?). More a kind of Carry On film stripped bare. A primary coloured black comedy. It was strange and fascinating with moments of comedy straight out of Jacques Tati (bobbing up and down at the hamburger stall) and moments of absolute awfulness. I was hooked from the start: the salacious lingering over the bicycle down tubes and then Mike’s joyous cycle ride in the grey London dawn to his first job (aged 15) as a swimming baths attendant. With a Cat Stevens soundtrack. I could overlook the bad dubbing just for that.

So many impressions. (I wondered if Skolimowski was still snared in the long tail of WWII horror.) An adolescent encounters a gruesome, twisted adult world of sexuality. The grotesque close-ups of middle-aged faces. I remembered how wonderful youthfulness is – the agility and the slimness beside lumbering, lumpen age. The colours were beautiful – Jane Asher’s long hair and long yellow coat. The vibrant (if peeling) paint of the swimming pool contrasted with the grey streets outside. It was like a separate world of the id. Creepy games masters are stereotypical, but Diana Dors – OMG! Asher was poised somewhere between youth and adult – disillusioned and occasionally vicious. And even innocence could act in a deadly way.

I saw afterwards that it was partly filmed in the Müller‘sches Volksbad in Munich. That brought back memories.