Sometimes movies can truly encapsulate the times and experiences they present.
As an example, while some coming-of-age films can be heavy-handed tales of young people going through life changes, others do manage to tell an authentic story. They don’t necessarily have to be good films though should contain some element that resonates with an audience.
Ray Winstone’s That Summer isn’t a great film. But it is the product of a specific location and period; Torquay back in 1979, marking a time when the resort was a-changing and, albeit unintentionally, it recounts the ending of an era.
It’s the slight story of a group of young people visiting the Bay and is based on an established tradition of incomers searching for employment and adventure.
So, why did so many young folk come to Torquay?
For perhaps thirty years Torquay offered a sojourn between school and the kind of life that most expected they should one day live; a liberty break before taking on the responsibilities and rewards of marriage, family, home ownership, and secure work.
The assumption was that these ‘girls and boys interrupted’ would always return to their hometowns and resume the life that had been the right of working people for generations.
For most of history people were born, lived and died within a few miles of their birthplace. Few working-class people had the option to travel to other places for pleasure rather than necessity.
An exception for young men wanting to broaden their horizons was to join the armed forces. Another opportunity, but only for the privileged and exceptional, was higher education. However, only 4% of school leavers went to university in the 1960s, most leaving education at the age of 15. Women had even fewer options and were generally not expected to have careers but to take on short-term jobs before marriage and children.
Life for many young people in post-war Britain could indeed be bleak. Almost half the population lived in private rented accommodation, much of it in poor condition. There were more than three children in most families, a quarter of British homes had no electricity, and many had no telephone or indoor toilet.
Yet there was very low unemployment. Up to the early 1970s joblessness averaged 2%, was always well under one million, and there was ongoing demand for semi-skilled labour, which brought a steady growth in young people’s earnings.
There were also more young people around as an increased post-war birth rate saw the numbers of those aged under twenty rise from three million in 1951 to over four million in 1966.
It was the seaside resorts that offered an alternative to a routine and mundane passage through life, a way to temporarily relocate to a place which needed low-skilled labour, and which could offer live-in accommodation.
About half the population spent a holiday by the sea, usually visiting a nearby resort such as Brighton or Blackpool. The Bay, in contrast, was a distant, glamorous and special place, frequented by the most affluent of vacationers.
Here was a place to live independently, find love, and make new friendships, away from parents and the constraints of church, family, and home community. Although Torquay was a relatively small town, entertainment was plentiful in pubs, clubs, and theatres. Popular stage and screen performers of the day walked the streets while Lionel Digby brought in the famous bands.
Undeniably, the work on offer was low-skilled, poorly paid, seasonal, and often demanded unsociable hours. But this was never a career, only a short-term paid holiday. And there was always a way back for those taking such working-class sabbaticals.
Promoting and idealising this alternative and exciting lifestyle were a series of movies which took a lead from the American ‘teenpic’ industry. Adopting an idiosyncratic British approach, they often featured pop stars such as Tommy Steele and Cliff Richard.
An offshoot was the seaside movie which certainly celebrated youthful hedonism. Yet the best also peered beneath the surface to reveal painful truths, including a coastal ennui restricted by lingering class and gender restraints and punctuated with occasional violence. Notable are Brighton Rock and The System, the latter filmed in Torbay.
Coming late in the day was That Summer.
The movie’s storyline consists of two girls who arrive in Torquay to work as chamber maids for the summer. They meet two boys, also new in town, who come into conflict with a gang of stereotypically evil Scottish ne’er do wells, reflecting the rivalries between groups from different parts of Britain. One of the lads, played by a very young Ray Winstone, enters the ‘Round the Bay’ swimming race. A Scottish gang member is predictably a rival in the competition.
In a Torquay where every time you go out you meet the same people, various confrontations take place and Ray is framed for a robbery in a (Torre) chemists’ shop. Our hero is promptly arrested just as he is about to start the race though he manages to escape and joins the competition. The real Scottish chemist-plundering villain is quite easily forced to confess and Ray, naturally, goes on to win back his good name, the race and his girlfriend.
One scene that caused much amusement among locals was filmed in the Pickwick pub. In the film Ray gets a job and accommodation in the Pickwick; now Twiggy’s Bar. He opens his curtains and gets a fine view of Torquay harbour… rather than the back of Primark. The spatially confusing scene is 19 minutes in.
That Summer isn’t going to rival Citizen Kane but is a glimpse back at a lost and perhaps more innocent Torquay.
52 minutes in the 400 Club appears, and there are scenes filmed on the Strand and Oddicombe Beach showing just how many people came to Torquay back in the 1970s.
It was never intended to be anything special though That Summer does deserve its place in the resort’s abiding upbeat mythology, a narrative that has always camouflaged underlying social fissures. Even though the objective was to promote Torquay as a place of leisure and pleasure, hints at the real 1970s Britain are still to be found.
All history has a soundtrack, and an ironic subtext of That Summer comes in the fine vinyl album that accompanied the film’s release. It includes Ian Dury and the Blockheads, Elvis Costello, the Boomtown Rats, and the Undertones. Many of the tracks inadvertently undermine the naive optimism of the movie and reflect growing fissures in British society, discontent that could be seen nightly on the news.
And it was in the real Torquay of 1979 that young itinerant workers were seeing the nation’s social contract fracturing, giving progressively fewer reasons to return to the communities of their birth.
By the release date of the movie joblessness had risen to 1.5 million and was continuing to increase, the official level exceeding 3.2 million, almost 12%, by 1984. The loss of so many well-paid jobs was particularly hard felt in the industrial heartlands of Scotland, South Wales, the Midlands and the north of England.
The youth labour market was subsequently dismantled during the 1980s as education, employment, and training were redefined, extending the transition into work and adulthood.
In a few short few years jobs for life diminished, while many proud working-class communities changed for ever. For some who came to Torquay for a stopgap, there was little to go back to.
Today Torquay is a cosmopolitan town with the accents heard in the streets coming from across the nation and, during the twenty-first century, the world. Amongst the tourists are those who came for a short working holiday and never left. Their interregnum in Britain’s premier resort had become a forever stay.
That Summer offers a glimpse of a lost society and can be viewed online free of charge.
