The Moon Over the Alley

Amateurish 1975 filmusical from Joseph Despins, a young Canadian working in Britain, "Moon Over the Alley" is an embarrassing attempt to inject "realist" approaches to this fantasy genre. Crudely shot on a tiny BFI-generated budget, pic once again demonstrates that realistic representations on screen come after hard work and construction, not taking a camera on location and using nonactors or semi-pros.

With the pretense of showing a slice of life on London's Portobello Road, William Dumaresq's script introduced a motley group of personages in Bertha Gusset's boardinghouse. When not bursting into maudlin, middle of the road songs (which sound like '60s rejects) by Galt MacDermot, the cast bickers in best "kitchen sink" tradition. Stereotypes abound: teenage lovers whose parents object; struggling family from Jamaica; drunken Irish barman and his bar dancer girl; local joint-smoking "hippies".

To pave the way for a heavy-handed building demolition ending, the film suddenly drops its cute pose and segues into contrived violence, a definite novelty for a musical (other than Ken Russell's "Tommy").

Underrehearsed, one-take cast is awkward, though Erna May as Gusset is amusing in her German lady in Britain routine. Pro cameraman Peter Hannan ("Slade in Flame", "Full Circle") delivers studied expressionistic lighting inside the boardinghouse and eye-straining low light out in the alley. The BFI Production Board aims to encourage young talent, but there's little talent on display here.

My review was written in September 1980 after a screening at Columbus Circle's Paramount theater as part of a British Film Now series.