The White Bus (1967)

The greatest movie ever!

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

This review is for Red, White and Zero. It's possible to reconstruct the facts around this film, but the IMDb listing is confusing. Lindsay Anderson's The White Bus was briefly and unsuccessfully released with two other shorts: a very short film by Peter Brook featuring Zero Mostel in a hurry (The Ride of the Valkyries - lots of frantic mugging), and Red and Blue by Tony Richardson. Only Lindsay Anderson's film seems to be readily available. (The others would make good Criterion extras.)I saw Red, White and Zero on late night Australian television in 1984. The White Bus wasn't seen to best effect on the small screen - rather self-consciously poetic, but as an Anderson film it will obviously bear reseeing. Red and Blue was fascinating and not very good. Tony Richardson was in love with the Nouvelle Vague, and raided its box of tricks and its composers (Bassiak from Jules and Jim; Duhamel from Godard's Pierrot le Fou) in an imitation Demy/Moreau vehicle for Vanessa Redgrave! She fluted a song in English, and Kevin Brownlow provided the jumpcuts. (You can hear her singing Bassiak's Bonjour Papa on YouTube).Most weirdly, the sex interests for the romantically-besieged Vanessa were provided by Douglas Fairbanks Jr, William Sylvester (the scientist from Kubrick's 2001), and Michael York. The sparks didn't exactly fly. Anyway, after 30 years, it's time to make this available again.

Cute, whacky and beautifully shot surrealistic short from Lindsay Anderson which clearly foreshadows if.... which followed a year later (plus O Lucky Man and Brittania Hospital too). The same cinematographer as on if.... plus the mix of black and white and colour shots. Some key music sound cues from if... feature here for the first time plus the reading of the proverbs quote "wisdom is the principal thing..." which opens if....There's also a bit of M Hulot's theme from Mon Oncle mixed in there plus some classic Tati-esque visual humor. I guess Mr Anderson had a whole lot of stuff already brewing that would come flowing out in force a little later.Criterion definitely missed a trick not including this on the if.... DVD/Bluray - a little more relevant than the Oscar winning short about the deaf kids I'd say. All in all a charming, strange and chuckly way to spend forty minutes.

I saw this film for the first time about a week ago. Honestly, I didn't understand most of it. If given the chance to watch it again, I would, mostly to try to figure it out. It gave my husband the creeps.The film is done with high quality and is masterful in setting moods. It runs like a nightmare, though. Situations in it are surreal, otherworldly, loud and then suddenly quiet. It seems to me that "The White Bus" is contrasting male and female roles in the workplace and why should it be wrong for women to take on some of the jobs that men are performing. When the Girl first joins the eerie tour, she sits on the bottom of the bus but soon after moves to the top of it, perhaps as an allegory for rising up in the world, freeing herself from the restraints of roles that placed squarely on each gender. At one point, when the Lord Mayor places his hand on the Girl's knee, it is a sexist gesture and the Girl frees herself by demanding that he remove his hand and then moving to the front of the bus.I give it five out of ten, simply because I don't understand it, although the filming of it was high quality work. If put into the context of all three of the films for which it was intended to be seen, then perhaps I would understand it better.

Interesting 47 minute short from a Shelagh Delaney short story. A girl quits her dull job, and goes on a surrealistic bus tour of a dilapidated Manchester. Along for the ride are a strange mix, including a lascivious vicar, lord mayor (Arthur Lowe, always great), etc. Many of the techniques that became part of 'If' and 'O Lucky Man' first show up here.(e.g. mixing color and B+W). It also follows 'O Lucky Man' in being a surreal journey of a somewhat passive, young lead character traveling through a world where they have little power. Enigmatic, sure, but it's interesting and entertaining in a Brechtian/Anderson sort of dark humored politically satirical way. Cleary it's making fun of the pathetic nature of modern society and our desperate need to justify all the glories of 'progress that really sap our humanity. Some terrific and haunting images. Anthony Hopkins appears very briefly singing in German (?!?).