Privilege (1967)
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74% of users liked it
(379 ratings)
After directing several extraordinary documentaries for the BBC, including the award-winning The War Game and Culloden, Peter Watkins made his first dramatic feature with this flawed but striking film about Steven Shorter (Paul Jones), a pop singer in a future society where entertainment is… More After directing several extraordinary documentaries for the BBC, including the award-winning The War Game and Culloden, Peter Watkins made his first dramatic feature with this flawed but striking film about Steven Shorter (Paul Jones), a pop singer in a future society where entertainment is controlled by a totalitarian government. Shorter's music and image are used to channel the impulses of rebellious youth; in one concert sequence, the crowd watches him sing a plaintive plea for love and understanding while locked in a cage surrounded by police officers armed with clubs. While Shorter is remarkably popular, he's also living a life created for him by the government, which Steven knows is a sham. When Shorter's handlers decide to revamp his image into that of an obedient, religious boy, he rebels, to his peril. Model Jean Shrimpton made her film debut here as an artist commissioned to paint a portrait of Shorter. Privilege later became something of a cult film; one of the film's admirers was rock poet Patti Smith, who recorded one of "Steven Shorter"'s songs, "Set Me Free," on her 1978 album Easter. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Directed By
- Peter Watkins
- Genres
- Drama, Classics, Science Fiction & Fantasy
- In Theaters
- Feb 28, 1967 Wide
- Studio
- Universal Pictures
Critic Reviews
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Fernando F. Croce, CinePassion
A raging and thoroughgoing satire of pop messiah-dom and media puppetry
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Sean Axmaker, Turner Classic Movies Online
Watkins doesn't offer any pretense of subtlety in his brash portrait of pop stardom and the entertainment industry as the opiate of the masses...
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Sean Axmaker, MSN.com
[Director Peter] Watkins doesn't bother with subtlety [and] he finds a strange, almost Christ-like figure in the passive [Paul] Jones...
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Dennis Schwartz, Ozus' World Movie Reviews
Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange" (1971) picked up the same storyline and most thought he was a genius for doing so.
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Bill Weber, Slant Magazine
Though Watkins delivered sharper countercultural-themed films later, Privilege had the jump on Easy Rider in telling a generation that they were going to blow it.
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Cast
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Paul Jones
as Steve Shorter
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Jean Shrimpton
as Vanessa Ritchie
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Mark London
as Alvin Kirsch
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William Job
as Andrew Butler
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Max Bacon
as Julie Jordan
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Jeremy Child
as Martin Crossley
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James Cossins
as Prof. Tatham
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Frederick Danner
as Marcus Hooper
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Victor Henry
as Freddie K.
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Arthur Pentelow
as Leo Stanley
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Michael Barrington
as Bishop of Essex
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Edwin Finn
as Bishop of Cornwall
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John Gill
as Bishop of Surrey
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Norman Pitt
as Bishop of Hersham
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Alba
as Bishop of Rutland
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Steve Kirby
as Squit
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Doreen Mantle
as Miss Crawford
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Michael Graham Cox
as Timothy Arbutt