httpvh://youtu.be/iPu1h_bbL3Q
Bingo, as interpreted by the 1960s German documentary A WORKING MEN’S CLUB IN SHEFFIELD, might as well come from Xanadu. The narrator gargles with the mathematical complexities of the game as bleak monochrome footage portrays some sort of lost world.
Most of the documentary follows suit, showing off a particular facet of our cultural heritage, the Dial House Social Club in Sheffield circa 1964, filtered through the eyes of some continental outsiders. The black and white footage, terraced streets and intermittent scenes of heavy industry grow so potent that the footage seems to become coated in some sort of psychic mould. Escape beckons from the social club and its many activities such as pool, live music and the archaic slot machine favoured by club founder Pop Lomas. Throughout, the filmmakers reinforce the sense of meeting all of the people encountered by showing still photos of them afterwards.
Curiously, the film almost seems to linger on the small numbers of black faces it meets as it ranges about town. In one memorable scene, a group of schoolgirls run round in a circle with a black girl outside, staring incomprehensibly inwards. She makes no attempt to join them, yet she remains out of the loop. The seeds of today’s multicultural society seem incongruous, given the 1930s style industrial bleakness, yet they are there.
… it actually takes a pop at trying to convey how it feels getting tanked up all afternoon down your local.
As per the German film, the rest of the programme comprised selected films from the BFI collection ROLL OUT THE BARREL: THE BRITISH PUB ON FILM. Of these, the Philip Trevelyan Royal Academy of Art film THE SHIP HOTEL – TYNE MAIN stood way out. Where many of its companions were propagandist or promotional, it actually takes a pop at trying to convey how it feels getting tanked up all afternoon down your local.
Despite being set in this scorched-earth style industrial gulag of a landscape, many of the themes are universal. For instance, it is the only film here to show beer stains and urinals. Similar in tone to the melodramatic post-war boozers Terrence Davies is so fond of, this pub lives and breathes and sings. Yet it’s grittier, flintier and very possibly damned. Few domino games elicit such tension as the one here does. As one old lady emerges from the fug she gazes out across the broken landscape and weeps. Whether booze dribbles from her tear ducts or sorrow we’ll never know.
A WORKING MEN’S CLUB IN SHEFFIELD and ROLL OUT THE BARREL: THE BRITISH PUB ON FILM screened at the Sheffield Doc/Fest 2012