Up the Junction

I’ve just purchased the recently re-issued DVD of the 1968 film “Up the Junction” directed by Peter Collinson and starring Suzy Kendall and Dennis Waterman. Its an account of life in a grim Battersea and Clapham Junction that the swinging sixties hadn’t then reached. The writer of the novel upon which the film was based had herself  moved from upmarket Chelsea to live in the backstreets of working class Battersea. (I’m sure its now a trendy chichi place to live). 

With a soundtrack by Manfred Mann and the cute Adrienne Posta as the brassy factory dollybird ultimately suffering a backstreet abortion the humour is decidedly black. But as a social document of the times its invaluable. Highly recommended.

The book (her first) was written by Nell Dunn in 1963 and it became a BBC TV play before ultimately becoming a film. Nell was then married to Jeremy Sandford, famous for the equally harrowing and even more famous BBC TV plays “Cathy come home” and “Edna the inebriate woman”.