Privilege

Peter Watkins’ biting pop satire foresaw the manipulation of celebrity as a tool of mass control.

  • Director

    Peter Watkins

  • With

    Paul Jones, Jean Shrimpton, Mark London, William Job

  • UK 1967. 103min

  • Digital

  • Certificate

    PG

Watkins’ extraordinary satire imagines a near-future Britain in which a manufactured pop idol is used by the authorities to distract the public into ‘fruitful conformity’. Casting Manfred Mann’s Paul Jones as the emotionally hollow Steven Short, alongside 1960s icon Jean Shrimpton, Watkins anticipated the growing entanglement of celebrity culture, advertising and political manipulation. It’s one of the key British films of the era.

James Bell