User Reviews

Several decades ago, when I was but a youngster, cinema-goers in the United Kingdom expected a full supporting programme when they went to the pictures. So they'd show up around 7pm and then would sit through a B-movie, then a newsreel, probably made by Pathe, perhaps a couple of cartoons - Tom and Jerry or Bugs Bunny, then a short documentary ("Visit exciting Cleethorpes"), the infamous Pearl & Dean advertisements and finally, around 9pm, the main feature.

This kind of thing was still going on in the 1960s when I first began going to the local ABC or Odeon.

And this documentary, GIRL, GIRLS, GIRLS, was exactly the kind of documentary they'd serve up between the B-movie and the main feature. It was pretty much a programme-filler. Nobody came to the movies to see the documentary.

Of course, this was shot in colour. Back then, television was all monochrome, so the novelty of seeing a documentary in colour gave it some curiosity value. And this one was about models and dancers, and back then, we thought it was okay to ogle young girls frolicking around the screen, however innocently they did it.

Briefly, the "plot" follows three young girls from the Home Counties who come to London in search of glamorous careers. One begins as a photographer's assistant, trains at Lucy Clayton's modelling school and becomes a showroom model. Another trains as a dancer and lands a job in a London nightclub. It's all kind or twee and a little bit precious. But riveting as a snapshot of what London looked like in 1961.

So the other purpose these documentary fillers were serving was as a training and proving ground for the movie directors of the future. The big studios (this one was produced by United Artists) would churn this stuff out to fill programme slots and assign their young, promising directors to see how they would handle schedules and film crews.

But the most interesting thing is that this was directed by Michael Winner, who would go on to make many terrible feature films, the most famous of which were the DEATH WISH movies with Charlie Bronson.

There's hardly any chance of seeing this kind of cinematic curiosity these days. This one turned up in a late night slot on SKY ARTS channel shortly after Michael Winner died. But don't worry, it's really only of interest to the idly curious.

This "Girls! Girls! Girls!" has no connection with the Elvis Presley musical of the same name from the following year. This is a short documentary made by Michael Winner, later to become one of Britain's best-known, and most controversial, film directors. It is in colour, which suggests that it was made for the cinema rather than television, as British cinemas still showed documentary shorts in the early sixties and colour TV did not arrive in Britain until several years later.

The film is about three young women, Tania, Primrose and Sandra, who share a London flat together. When it was recently shown on the Sky Arts channel it was advertised as showing us "pre-Pill, pre-Beatles" London, a description which is technically correct but irrelevant as the film has nothing to do with popular music and very little to do with sex. We are briefly introduced to the girls' boyfriends, but there is no real discussion of their sex lives, a topic which would have been far riskier in 1961 than it would have been only a few years later. What the film does do is to follow the girls in their careers; Tania and Primrose are aspiring models and Sandra a dancer. (As Tania Mallet, Tania was later to become one of Britain's best-known models. She also appeared as a Bond Girl in "Goldfinger", her only feature film).

Winner reveals himself as a feature-film director in the making. He has a good eye for a striking image and knows how to compose a shot, often by emphasising a brightly-coloured object in the foreground against a background of more muted colour. This object is more often than not one of the girls' dresses, which serves to keep them in the forefront, visually speaking.

With a film like this, made fifty-three years ago, one's normal instinct today would be to watch it for evidence of how things have changed, but apart from the old-fashioned vehicles in the streets and the absence of high-rise skyscrapers on the skyline, the London we see here looks oddly familiar- far more so, I suspect, than the London of fifty-three years previously (i.e. of 1908) would have done to people in 1961. The girls and their boyfriends all dress smartly but conservatively, which means (paradoxically) that today they look far less dated than they would have done if they had worn the hip, trendy fashions of the sixties, all of which had ceased to be hip and trendy by the end of the seventies. (And some of them by the end of the sixties).

Some things, however, have changed between 1961 and 2014. The commentary, to modern ears, sounds horribly smarmy and patronising, and although this is supposed to be a "fly on the wall" documentary some of the scenes are quite obviously faked. (Yes, I know that modern documentarists are quite capable of faking things, but they generally do so in a less obvious manner). The scene which particularly struck me as staged was the one where Tania goes for her audition as a model and is then held up to the other girls as an example of how not to dress. Would such an attractive and stylish young woman really have dressed in such a frumpish way for a modelling audition? And would the head of the agency really have subjected her to such a public humiliation?

I won't give this film a mark out of ten; I generally reserve those for feature films, and it is difficult to compare them to short documentaries like this one. "Girls! Girls! Girls!" , however, does have some interest for the modern viewer, if only for its insights into how documentaries used to be made.

As one other reviewer has mentioned shorts like this appeared in the cinema in the sixties. Not because anyone in their right mind would want to see them but because they could lots of money from the Easy levy. Whenever films like this were shown i would go and find a seat in the foyer and a paper till it was finished. They were truly dreadful .I found it difficult to keep any interest after about the halfway point.

For some reason Talking Pictures tv have decided to inflict them on us.

They are not a patch on the Look At Life series which are a fascinating insight of what life was like 60 years ago.

If you were around in the early '60's this film will bring some memories flooding back. Not the type of film you'd associate with Michael Winner and much more charming than his standard output. It's a simple tale of 3 young women making their early moves to build a career in London, nothing profound and many might think it frivolous. To me it's evocative, with warmth and wit and I certainly didn't regret investing half an hour of my time in watching it. Plenty of useful tips for ladies with aspirations to be chic and sophisticated, such as how to look after your nails and makeup, walk like a model and get in and out of cars! A scene in a furriers is a real glimpse into the world which some of us inhabited back then, when political correctness was not yet on the radar. In the UK, catch it on Sky Arts at some time in the future - it will no doubt be repeated.