Good Times, Wonderful Times
May 06 - May 08, 2011
(Lionel Rogosin, Great Britain/USA, 1966, DigiBeta, 73 min)
With profound humanity and striking images, Rogosin’s third film may be considered a pivotal work in his filmmaking. It is a departure from the neo-realist and Flahretian influence of On The Bowery and Come Back Africa and represents his search for a “new form” with the participation of avant-garde actors like Molly Parkin.
Inspired by a deep sense of the danger of nuclear annihilation and the horrors of war, Rogosin traveled the world to gather rare footage in the early 1960s. Brilliantly contrasting these images in all their brute power with a posh dinner party in London, it is a powerful orchestration of moral issues that leaves each viewer face to face with his own responsibilities.
Rogosin finished the film in 1964 just as the Vietnam War was in full swing. He was obliged to distribute it himself through his company Impact Films in order to get the film shown. It is estimated that a million students saw the film as it was shown around American universities and Rogosin was proud to say he felt he helped to convince thousands of young men to resist the war.
Inspired by Hiroshima Mon Amour, Good Times pushes the use of historical images to the extreme, creating a chain reaction resulting in an emotional explosion of horror, awareness and hope. It won the Cine Forum Award as the official British entry for feature film at the 1965 Venice film festival.
"This is Rogosin’s masterpiece, a radical piece of cinematic decoupage that implicates the attendees of a posh London cocktail party in a century of slaughter." —Seattle Post Globe