Oliver Reed, Ladies' Man of The System

THE SYSTEM
(KL Studio Classics, 1964, UK, 93 minutes)

Oliver Reed shines in The System, released as The Girl-Getters in the US, as a ladies' man at a crossroads in his life. Years before the roles that would come to define him, like Father Grandier in Ken Russell's The Devils, the intense, blue-eyed actor played souvenir photographer Steve "Tinker" Taylor in Michael Winner's 1964 character study. 

At first, the 23-year-old seems to have it all. He lives in a seaside resort town where he has his pick of the ladies in town for the summer. He has a job, an apartment, and a group of like-minded friends. Granted, the job doesn't pay much, the apartment is a low-ceiling affair, and the friends are a rowdy lot, but it's a sweet life for a man of minimal ambition (David Hemmings, who plays one of those friends, would go on to portray one of cinema's most iconic photographers in Antoniono's Blow-Up).

Tinker spends his days wandering the beaches of Dover, flirting, snapping pictures, and getting in fisticuffs with rival photographers. Afterward, he asks his subjects for their addresses, and if they're pretty, he shares them with his pals. Once his camera shop boss (The Hill's Harry Andrews) develops the pictures, subjects can pay to claim their copies. 

Winner focuses on a climactic summer in which Tinker tangles with an unhappily married woman (Ann Lynn), a busy model (Susan Merrow), and a party girl (Barbara Ferris) desperate to marry and settle down. Once he realizes he's fallen for Nicola, the model, the tables turn as he questions the smallness of his life, but a humiliating afternoon with her upper-crust associates drives home his limited range of options. While out on a date, Nicola asks him, "What happens to these places in the winter? Do they close down?” Then, she adds, "What happens to you in the winter?" "I close down, too, don't I," he quips. 

The System is a very British film that compares favorably to the work of Tony Richardson and John Schlesinger in which the wealthy characters hold all of the cards, but it also bears the continental imprint of Federico Fellini, particularly in Nicolas Roeg's atmospheric cinematography and a rueful, nostalgic tone that recalls I Vitelloni (Roeg was six years away from his co-directorial debut, Performance, with Donald Cammell). 

In his fast-paced commentary, Australian film historian Stephen Vagg notes that Reed and Winner would make four films together, including 1967's I'll Never Forget What's'isname, while the filmmaker would find even greater commercial success in the States where he directed six blunt-impact movies with Charles Bronson, including 1974's Death Wish. 

The extra features also include an insightful interview with Susan Merrow, who describes the alcohol-sodden shoot as rambunctious (she would end up dating Hemmings for four years). As for Reed, The System helped him to graduate to A-list pictures from low-budget horror features, and he's terrific here as a conflicted character who can be funny and romantic, but also sarcastic, cruel, and possibly even dangerous. Highly recommended. 

  Images from Back Row, Kultguy's Keep, and Cult Film Freak.