The legendary rock band The Who branched out into movie-making in the late 1970s – and went full throttle with a big-screen version of their classic album QUADROPHENIA. What could have turned into a vanity project and an ego trip in their own minds turned into one of the greatest British youth films of all time.
Jimmy (Phil Daniels) is a Mod in 1964 London. He works for a big-time ad agency during the day, but at night he seeks out the joys of drugs and parties of the street, with his gang of friends battling their nemesis, the Rockers, personified by old school friend Kevin (THE DEPARTED’s Ray Winstone, in one of his very early screen roles).
His affection for local girl Steph (Leslie Ash) is well-founded and the life and image of the Mod and what it represents is very much in his mindset. The focus is now on a big gathering in Brighton, when the two tribes are about to collide in spectacular fashion. For Jimmy, the event seems to represent the peak of his world, something he will have to face up to if he is going to survive….
Directed by Franc Roddam, who also co-wrote the script with Martin Stellman, QUADROPHENIA maintains the essence of the album by fusing the spirit of the songs in with classic 1960s hits and serving the story of disenfranchised youth that would not look out of place in American cinema classics like REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE.
Granted, the Brighton sequences do lose their veneer given that they were shot in 1978 (look carefully and you can see a cinema briefly showing the new releases of that time), but the spirit and consistency of the youthful vibrancy throughout remain as potent as they did four decades earlier. The film was lensed by Brian Tufano, who shot the award winning EAST IS EAST.