SEASIDE SPECIAL - CAMBRIDGE FILM FESTIVAL
O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us/To see oursels as ithers see us!. Robbie Burns must have been watching ‘Seaside Special’, a new documentary premiered at the Cambridge Film Festival. The setting sounds unpromising: a year in the life of the variety show at the end of Cromer pier. But this turned out to be one of the most delightful, thought-provoking, charming and utterly heart-warming of documentaries I have seen. A delicious spoonful of gladdening tonic mixed with sea air and a dose of hurtful truth. The film by German director Jens Meurer charts the unique end-of-pier show held each year in the North Norfolk seaside resort. We begin in winter 2018/19 with the plans afoot for the summer spectacle to come. Meurer points his lens at a group of Cromer characters and visiting performers who, over the next 90 minutes, will become people you would dearly love to meet. There’s show director Di Cooke, excited but nervous about the task ahead even though she had been in charge of the song-dance-comedy revue for years. You can tell that Meurer had spent a long time in Cromer as his subjects talk to camera with an utterly refreshing candour: about the fragility of show biz, being torn from their families for the 15-week summer run and above all, the worries and in some case hopes for Brexit which was washing up in Cromer following the political tsunamis in Westminster that year. We make friends with rugged fisherman John Lee who surveys the pier and the town from far off at sea. He is pro Brexit ‘Great Britain is called that for a reason’ but whatever your views you sympathise and understand his viewpoint. He becomes a fisherman friend.
The performers shown mostly backstage or catching a breath or a fag out on the windswept pier similarly talk with such refreshing honesty. These are truly human stories and what comes out most strongly is love: for their family and friends, for their showy business and for Cromer. As the seasons change, the gorgeous cinematography caught on 16mm film makes the whole thing look like a home movie we all wish we could make. Cromer pier has never looked so enticing even in the pouring rain though the summer of ’19 was a good one.
What makes this film so special is not only the love the German crew had for the pier show but also an honest glimpse into Britain in turmoil over the B word. Behind the fun and gaiety of the show itself (of which we catch quite a lot and it looked very entertaining and professional) there is a quietly elegiac air to the movie. A sense that something precious was being lost. As it turned out the director’s presence was prescient. Covid followed the next season and the pier show has never quite been the same again. Then Britain left the EU and ditto ditto.
It was a love postcard to an England that is worth trying to preserve: descent, funny, a bit barmy but compassionate and humane. The film has special qualities in buckets and spades and deserves a much wider showing. If it does, Cromer will, I predict, see a boom in tourism though gone are the many wonderful artistes we get to know in the film: ‘The man they call G’ the impressionist, feisty and funny dancing twins Polly and Sophie Duniam, charismatic comedian/MC Paul Eastwood and very fine singer Emily Yarrow whom we get to know especially well. The rolling credits reveal that one of the cast died unexpectedly a year after filming was done and it came as a real hammer blow. These were our new friends.
Being a German, albeit with a long-time love of England, director Meurer unearths elements of old England mixed with the new, that are lost to those of us born here. He has done the greatest job any documentary maker, any artist, can do: to see ourselves as others see us.
‘Seaside Special’ will be showing again on Thursday as part of the 41st Cambridge Film Festival
https://www.cambridgefilmfestival.org.uk/
