Quadrophenia:Jimmy vs. World by Howard Hampton

Quadrophenia: Jimmy vs. World 

By Howard Hampton

The article was written by Howard Hampton and was published on the criterion's website. This is  credible source as they are a company who are releasing older "high-brow" films to make them accessible to a newer younger audience.

Hampton compares Quadrophenia to Martin Scorcese's Mean Streets (1973) as it shares it's "dedication to emotional veracity, but it's midsixties streets are meaner, more inhospitable" this shows British Social Realism films to have more veracity and closer to real life than other genres.

"Pete Townshend hit on the catchy idea of doubling Jimmy's schizophrenia making it 'quadrophenia'" This shows the film deals with very real themes and topics. 

"Jimmy isn't presented as a cool audience surrogate, a heroic rebel; there's a built-in detatchment to his gradual, o-so-awkward disintegration" Example of social realism films showing 'real' people as their protagonist and not the traditional hollywood hero.

"Played with gawky, monophonic intensity by Phil Daniels, he's a twitchy and inarticulate regular lad with no visable drive, no Dean/De Niro charisma"

" In a public bathhouse - a sign of how cramped and decrepit life in Britain remained twenty years after the war." Shows the film portrays a very realistic look at British life at the time.

" By the time that the movie was made, the mods had been succeeded by several waves of British subcultures. Those prophets of alienation included, to name the most visible, hippies, skinheads, headbangers, glitter kids, and, by 1979, punks."

"Everyday mods like Jimmy, with their parkas, pasty, acne-mapped faces, and high strung clumsiness." Shows social realism films' protagonists as being average working class people with everyday problems.

"The last-shot-first nature of quadrophenia makes Jimmy's story seem like a loop he's destined to repeat."