Privilege

Privilege (1967)

  • 74% of users liked it
    (367 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

Unrated, 1 hr. 41 min.
Directed By
Peter Watkins
Genres
Drama, Classics, Science Fiction & Fantasy
In Theaters
Feb 28, 1967 Wide
On DVD
Jul 29, 2008
Universal Pictures

Critic Reviews

  • Fernando F. Croce, CinePassion

    A raging and thoroughgoing satire of pop messiah-dom and media puppetry

  • 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...

  • 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...

  • 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.

  • 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.

Read all 6 critic reviews

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Featured Audience Ratings

  • Robert C


    I'm guessing this is probably one of the earliest examples of a "mocumentary", which is impressive. What is also impressive is how eerily prophetic it is, to spite it's (sometimes) painfully dated moments. A telling look at the making, selling and ultimate… More

  • Walter M


    Made in 1967, "Privilege" at first seems to be little more than just a reaction against Beatlemania as it starts with a ticker tape parade for rock star Steven Shorter(Paul Jones) in his home town of Birmingham, England.(If Jones' performance appears to be affectless,… More

Cast

See full cast

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