Smashing Time is the ultimate Mod fairy tale with Yvonne (Lynn Redgrave) and Brenda (Rita Tushingham) as a pair of brash, gawky northern lasses navigating a candy-coloured whirl of London go-go clubs, boutiques and swinging parties with the help of up-to-the-moment photographer Tom Wabe (Michael York).
In no time at all, Yvonne (blonde, big and bouncy with a permanent. delicious grin) has become a tone-deaf pop star – with a voice that can only be described as “unearthly” (dig the Andrew Loog Oldham-clone who signs her up) – while waif-like Brenda (dark and small with huge eyes that gaze with a sulky allurement) becomes a top model and the new “Face of the 60s.”
The pair go their separate ways and battle it out at all kinds of swinging parties, groovy boutiques and happening hangouts before they meet up again at a party given in Yvonne’s honour at the Post Office Tower.
They decide they’ve had enough of the hip lifestyle and agree to head back up north together.
The film obviously wanted to show how fast the new fads and faces were coming and going during this frenetic period and has the girls eventually turning their backs on the Mod scene and returning home to the country.
Peter Jones provides a bright spot as a Hughie Green-style TV personality doing a kind of Candid Camerashow.
Written for the screen by Liverpudlian author and jazz singer George Melly, with everyone overacting like mad- London was never so swinging!
Yvonne
Lynn Redgrave Brenda
Rita Tushingham Tom Wabe
Michael York
Hon. Charlotte Brillig
Anna Quayle
Mrs Gimbel
Irene Handl
Bobby Mome-Rath
Ian Carmichael
Jeremy Tove
Jeremy Lloyd
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Yvonne
