Bread (1971)
UK smut auteur Stanley Long's (Think our answer to Jess Franco but more laughs and less thatch zoom shots) Bread is a rocking combination of music docudrama and typical 70's sauciness.
The plot involving a small group of progressive free thinkers (hippies) at a music festival who, on the way home pitch tents in the grounds of a large semingly empty mansion. However the owners who don't reside there full time have come down for the weekend and are not amused to find the unwelcome guests. After much drunkeness and Long's typical sexual shenanigans the group persuade the couple to let them stay on the premises as long as they paint the place and generally spruce it up. It's then that the hippies get the idea to hold their own rock concert in the grounds.
What follows is almost an instruction manual of hosting your own music festival as the group go about making money (via sex obviously) and booking bands.
The plot on the whole is slight but the whole music business angle was interesting, at least to me. As an example of a Stanley Long film this isn't the best example although it's a topic he would revisit a few years later but this time 'How to make a porn film' rather than organize a gig, in the excellent Eskimo Nell (1975)
I think your enjoyment of Bread will be greatly enhanced if you enjoy the music on offer as we get several full songs both at the beginning and end in the live arena. The bands we see play are Jucy Lucy and Crazy Mabel - think psyche-blues rock with soul - The Black Crowes, Skynyrd, Creedence, Sabbath - all rolled into one. Personally i loved the performance footage it really made me hit my litre of Label 5 Scotch whisky hard.
The film is an extra on the BFI Flipside release of Lindsay Shonteff's Permissive and looks and sounds gorgeous.
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