Featuring a veritable 'who's-who' of great actors Laurence Harvey, Eric Pohlman, Susan Hampshire, Sylvia Syms, Martin Miller (in a bunch of throwaway scenes), and many others), this film captures the 'changing of the guard', as it were, as the youth music - the then-burgeoning rock and roll was just being born in the UK. The dialogue - esp. Mr Harvey's - is rat-a-tat fast, like another commenter (rayshaw44) of this film noted, is akin to His Girl Friday's. As for another commenter (LHL12), I have a beautiful print of the filn, and it contains the 'Nausea' sequence, as well as the others mentioned. I'm writing this almost a decade after they wrote their comment (actually a long interesting story of this films butchering), and therefore I don't know if they're aware that a complete version of 'Bongo' isn't that hard to find (though I DO totally understand and commiserate, being a completest myself, I'm a stickler for the 'correct', unadulterated versions of things). To say this is a film by a great master, like a Fellini or a Kubrick, it isn't. But there was a wonderful period in postwar England that the film business percolated (a pun), and many wonderful small films of all varieties were made. This is one of them. It makes me (as one who wasn't yet born) both fond of, as well as a bit misty-eyed, as the homogenous days we are now in leave no room for an individual's voice. I highly recommend Espresso Bongo.
Review of Expresso Bongo
