BY FRED BLOSSER
Jane
Birkin, Anita Pallenberg, a character named “Penny Lane,†sitar music by George
Harrison, Mod set design, Carnaby Street fashions, trippy psychedelic colors --
if you need a late-‘60s cultural fix and you’re short a time machine, Joe
Massot’s “Wonderwall†(1968) may be your next best remedy.
Middle-aged
scientist Oscar Collins (Jack MacGowran) lives a drab existence. At work, he peers through a microscope at
wriggling microbes. At home in his
solitary apartment, he reads Scientific American amid piles of bundled back
issues. One evening, he accidentally
knocks a hole in the wall that allows him to peer into the adjoining apartment,
occupied by a pretty aspiring model named Penny Lane (Birkin). Oscar’s flat looks like a disheveled Hobbit
hole. Penny’s is a swirl of vivid Pop
Art colors. Becoming infatuated and then
obsessed, Oscar devises additional ways to spy on his neighbor. When Penny holds a party, Oscar dresses up in
a tuxedo but remains in his apartment, watching through the peep hole. He imagines a series of chaste romantic
encounters with Penny, and a series of comic duels with Penny’s boyfriend (Iain
Quarrier) involving increasingly absurd phallic objects.
Screened
at Cannes but never released theatrically in the U.S., “Wonderwall†on the
surface seems like a whimsical variation on Roman Polanski’s “Repulsion†(1966)
and “What?†(1972) -- no coincidence,
since it was based on a story by Gérard Brach, Polanski’s friend and longtime
collaborator. MacGowran’s cartoonish
demeanor, art director Assheton Gorton’s eye-popping color palette, the silly
visuals in Oscar’s daydreams, and George Harrison’s eclectic score reinforce the
first impression that this is a comedy, not a downer like Polanski’s
psychodramas. But the movie is more
elusive than that. It definitely avoids
the predictable formula of today’s romantic comedies, in which Oscar would be
played by Matthew McConaughey or Ben Stiller, the voyeurism would be toned down,
and Oscar and Penny would eventually get together -- sort of the same way Kaley
Cuoco’s Penny and her nerdy scientist neighbor Leonard got together on TV’s
“The Big Bang Theory.†Massot, Brach,
and screenwriter Guillermo Cabrera Infante (“Vanishing Pointâ€) devise an ending
that may be happy, sad, or cosmically transcendent, depending on how you
interpret it.
Very much reminiscent of other Mod-era films like “Blow-Up,â€
“2001,†“If . . .,†and “Candy,†“Wonderwall†is given a welcome rescue from
obscurity by Fabulous Films and Shout Factory. The Blu-ray Collector’s Edition includes the original theatrical version
restored in hi-def by Pinewood Studios, a director’s cut assembled by Massot in
the late 1990s, and numerous extras. A
glossy, colorful souvenir booklet highlights Massot’s reflections about the
making of the film, written in 2000, two years before his death, with fond and
sometimes poignant memories of hanging with the Beatles, Polanski, Sharon Tate,
Eric Clapton, and others in the Swinging ‘60s. The Fabulous Films/Shout Factory Collector’s Edition Blu-ray can be ordered from Amazon by CLICKING HERE.