With thanks to Ian down the road, I've just enjoyed watching The Damned United. As someone who's loved football as much as surfing all my life, this film was probably always going to be a winner, but as a QPR fan I was particularly pleased to note the appearances of my beloved team in their mid-Seventies super-slick guise. I could go on about Stan Bowles and that magnificent side, one which so nearly won the First Division title, but editorial discretion prevents what would clearly be a ludicrously surreal departure. Instead, therefore, I will note that The Damned United has a surfing scene. Yes, it's true. I didn't spot it at first but I was watching the film with Harry and his eyes are finely tuned for such things. Here's what happened:
The Scene: Brighton. Peter Taylor, Brian Clough's long-suffering partner, is contemplating taking a job with Brighton & Hove Albion, Clough's big mouth having got the pair of them sacked from Derby County. In the background, the sea.
Harry: Look! Waves!
Me: Good grief, you're right.
For a fleeting moment we look at lined up, if small, waves. I scour the backdrop for someone who would have been a real pioneer given the film's timeframe, i.e. a mid-Seventies Brighton surfer. But no one is in the water.
A minute or so later the camera again pans over Brighton's seafront. In the background - yes, you've guessed right.
Harry: Look! Swell!
Me: You're right. I told you, they do get waves in Brighton.
The camera moves away from the ocean. Harry, who along with his brother Elliot has completely failed to see anything of interest in football, becomes absorbed in the narrative.
Harry: So did this Brian Clough bloke ever win anything?
Me: Yes. But the subtext to the film, aside from providing mainstream cinematic evidence of the fact that there is surf in Brighton, is that QPR were the best football team of the Seventies. One can discern this through the manifest sympathy for attractive, passing football evinced throughout the film - something which we, as viewers, admire in Clough even though we feel, at times, that he is barking mad - allied with the cleverly timed references to QPR and Stan Bowles. It is almost as if 'The Glorious QPR' reads as an unspoken and yet tangible counterpoint to 'The Damned United', so that we condemn Don Revie even more than before for barely ever playing Bowles in the England team despite the fact that he was by far the most talented English footballer of his generation.
Harry: Really?
Me: Of course. It's all there. You just need to watch these things carefully. When you're older, my son, you'll understand.
Image of Stan Bowles courtesy of Flickr user Jarrington.
WHAT...SURF IN BRIGHTON????
Indeed this is true and may I direct you to the somewhat inappropriately named http://www.photoslags.co.uk
you will see from the range of photos on display on his site that t not only are there waves and surfers in Brighton, but both, on occasion, would appear to be quite good.....
But don't tell anybody...
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