I'll Never Forget What's'isname (1967) User Reviews

Flawed nostalgia piece

[North_Londoner · 5/10 · 3 May 2009]

Pretty poor film in terms of plot and structure but interesting as a glimpse of a long gone London and for some lovely footage of Cambridge.

Also worth casting your eye over the cast, Welles looking bloated and unwell, Reed's striking looks somewhat dented by the facial scarring as a result of a 1963 bar fight and Carol White youthful and beautiful before her succumbing in following years to substance addiction. Michael Winner makes one his final Brit films before moving to Hollywood and it's certainly no classic, kind of a 'Garden State' of its day - episodic but contrived and laboured.

However, England looks good and the 60s do look pretty swinging.

Deserves greater recognition

[Leofwine_draca · 7/10 · 14 March 2020]

I'LL NEVER FORGET WHAT'S 'ISNAME is one of Michael Winner's more obscure movies these days, but I found it one of his best. It's a character study of an amoral man trying to make his way through a calculating and ruthless Swinging Sixties London, where he's beset by romantic and career woes. I watched ALFIE a few months ago and found it quite nauseating due to the ruthlessness of Michael Caine's character, but this takes a similar theme and character and gets it dead right. It helps that Oliver Reed gives a bracing and bravura turn as the tough lead, ably supported by character actors left, right and centre and a plot that keeps twisting and turning with surprises all around. Winner's film climaxes with an astonishing montage sequence that has to be seen to be believed. Challenging and timely, this is a film with something to say and one that deserves more recognition.

Winner & Reed Go Full-Throttle Sixties

[TheFearmakers · 6/10 · 12 May 2022]

Another 1960's collaboration from director Michael Winner with actor Oliver Reed, I'LL NEVER FORGET WHATS'ISNAME has an obvious and incredibly intended message from the get-go as Reed, a young and successful ad man, comes to work wielding an ax, destroying his own desk before quitting to his literally big boss Orson Welles, who, with every significantly-spoken one-liner, represents the evils of commercialism...

The movie feels like either a direct sequel to an original story showing how Reed's Andrew Quint became a success or that it started twenty-minutes in... Either way, with so much anger towards this occupation right off the bat... or ax... the writer has more things to say than the characters...

In this case Peter Draper of Winner/Reed's first and overall greatest joint, THE SYSTEM aka THE GIRL-GETTERS, which took time to flesh-out Reed and his cronies strategically chasing girls...

Not much different in Reed's specific case: while he quit a lucrative job for an old position writing for an indie magazine, he still loves (and is loved by) the ladies, including separated wife Wendy Craig, seductive lover Marianne Faithful and this film's innocent ingenue Carol White...

Who's the best thing going here... the POOR COW starlet playing a kind of comparably naive and ambiguous witness (the jerks are jerks and the good guys perfect idealists) for both Reed and the audience as director Winner... using surreal/psychedelic montages and flashbacks popular in this era, herein showcasing London's Swinging Sixties... traipses through a partial mind-trip sporadically weaving in and out of reality...

Before ultimately finding a genuine plot-line when Reed, forced back into working for the monopolizing Orson, finds his revenge by making a loaded, telegraphed thus predictable commercial in a counter-culture study that's often easier on the eyes (creative/intriguing visuals) than ears (forced/contrived dialogue).

A high mark of Brit 60s flicks

[che-29 · 20 July 2000]

There were so many good British films made in the 60s ,that you rarely hear this one mentioned .Thou,it is a worthy film and is comparable to 'Performance' and 'Women in Love' as one of the best films of the era.It's about a Business executive who has to re-think his life and relationships for what they are worth. Orson Welles is great as his creepy Boss and all of the female actors who play his many girlfriends did a very convincing job. The Dream sequences are very LSD inspired.

If you like it also See 'The System' by the the same filmmaker.

"I'm not trying to be a success. I'm trying to succeed."

[mark.waltz · 7/10 · 21 December 2021]

Those are the key word to describe Oliver Reed in this British character study comedy where he spends the first few minutes quitting his job with powerful Orson Welles and then looks back on his life with the help of sometime girlfriend Carol White. He goes back to a reunions at his all-boys school, being the only friendly students to bring a female date, and it's a bizarre sequence that ends with him beaten up by the old school bullies, more confused than ever.

An encounter with an old professor, Harry Andrews, is bizarre when Andrews makes a crass pass at White, showing her dirty movies in a strange looking apparatus in his office. Reed must decide what he wants with White, either just sex or something more, especially since he's already got a wife who has sent a private detective out on his trail.

What this is supposed to be is never really confirmed because it is certainly a very bizarre film, but Reed and White do make it interesting with their flamboyant characterizations. Welles plays a real pig of a man, getting cereal all over him and trying to woo Reed back at the same time. Perhaps it's the eccentricity of the script that makes it an interesting little piece of slice of life, directed by Michael Winner in a way that is interesting even if a lot of it makes no sense.

Dated and past its sell by date

[malcolmgsw · 4/10 · 2 April 2020]

Universal like many other American film companies came to London in the sixties.Films like this made them retreat back to Hollywood.Pretentious at best boring at worst.All of the leading actors died an early death due to one form of over indulgence or another.

Oliver Reed, Orson Welles, and Dolly Birds...

[malthursday · 10/10 · 11 November 2006]

I first saw this movie on Canadian TV on the midnight movie on CJOH and it has stuck in my head ever since. Back then, I enjoyed it for the psychedelic dream sequences, the dolly birds, and the good ol' "frank sexuality." Watching it again on DVD thirty years later, I find it still resonates, but for different reasons. Now, I relate more to Quint's rejection of his entire way of life and the way he wants to be free of it, but ultimately can't escape it.

The Super-8 commercial he makes at the end of the film is still dazzling -- one would think that Michael Winner would have gone on to greater things, but this film is the best thing he ever did. Same goes for Oliver Reed, although he made some good ones in the late '60s and early '70s. Several other Reed-Winner collaborations, THE SYSTEM (a/k/a THE GIRL GETTERS), THE JOKERS, and HANNIBAL BROOKS, are also worth checking out.

Excellent performances by Reed, Orson Welles, Carol White, and Harry Andrews, and a top script by Peter Draper (who also wrote THE SYSTEM).

Favorite bit of dialogue:

QUINT: I'm going to find an honest job.

LUTE: Silly boy. There aren't any.

Well made sixties film that shocks and accurately portrays period.

[gwilym49 · 10/10 · 7 April 2001]

(POSSIBLE SPOILER IN THIS COMMENT) Many aspects of sixties 'Swinging London' are portrayed in this film. Sixties motifs are shown with accuracy: colourful clothes, 'swinging' parties, a desire to be 'with it' and live in the now. However, grimmer aspects are also shown: public school bullying, the nastier side of the British Class system, and the ruthless world of advertising. An appalling accident in mid-plot totally defamiliarised me and left me in a state of shock for the rest of the film. I identified with Quint's loss completely. His violent rebellion against the 'system' at the beginning is followed through to an affective browbeating of the same system by its own methods.

A well made-film I always like to see again.

The year of 1967

[christopher-underwood · 8/10 · 2 November 2016]

The year of 1967 was significant for the 'swinging London', psychedelic music and some of the craziest movies ever made. This fine film from the much derided Michael Winner is one of the very good ones. Much use is made of UK locations, London, Cambridge and small but accurate details like the colourful boutiques and rather the awful public school. Also very apt for the time is the idea that work should be 'honest', that joint the 'rat race' or treadmill of life was all wrong. That there was an alternative. The concept of free love also prevalent at the time is also much to the fore although Winner does not shy away from tackling the downside, divorce, jealousy, children etc. But, this is a colourful and mostly cheerful film with great performances from a host of British stars. Reed is great, Carol White does very well, as does Wendy Craig (don't think I've seen her in her underwear before!) and must also mention delightful cameo from a gorgeous looking Marianne Faithful. It's all much ado about nothing essentially but there is an edge to this and it is a very accurate slice of life in 1967.

A disturbing study of alienation

[ianlouisiana · 9/10 · 10 October 2007]

In its original form,"I'll never forget whats'isname"was briefly notorious for being the first mainstream film to use the "F" word.Mis C.White was the lady responsible - a giant leap for womankind indeed. Now its efficacy is blunted by constant use.Perhaps some clever person will one day invent another word one tenth as satisfying as F- dash used to be until the "Lady Chatterley" trial made in permissible in society,polite or otherwise.F - dash is what I say. The much - vilified Mr M.Winner pulled one out of the hat here. His theme of humanity being unable to cope with the strains of modern city life is repeated here(I suspect he would have loved to have made "Lost in Translation"). Although the Orson Welles character was alleged by the writer to have been based on Mr Winner,it is Oliver Reed as a disenchanted Cambridge man whose character is more like the director's. This is a very disturbing study of alienation.Mr Reed,whose subsequent career as a TV chat show drunk should not be allowed to overshadow his talent for playing menacing upper middle class charmers with secrets,is superb as the Public School ad man in crisis.His life implodes spectacularly and he uses the experience to make a commercial for Lute (Mr O.Welles,relatively restrained)that is deliberately horrific.It wins the award Lute longs for and Reed gradually recovering from his experiences decides to set up his own company in opposition. Don't be put off either by Mr Winner's subsequent career as a boorish food critic and appalling actor in TV ads,because,as a director,he was capable of making brilliant movies when the mood took him. Believe me "I'll never forget whatsisname" is one of them.

The swinging sixties grows up

[soverein · 10/10 · 23 December 1998]

Although constructed around "swinging " London this tale of futility in the pursuit of happiness endures. Oliver Reed will come as a surprise to most people who would not have thought the latter day hell raiser could deliver such a sensitive performance as the central character Andrew Quint.

A successful advertising exec Quint belabours the notion of a simple life and eschews the trappings of his current situation ( both professional and domestic ) to work at a small literary magazine with a friend from his days at Oxford. These trappings include two mistresses and an ex wife. The scenes with the mistresses are perhaps the least pleasing of the whole film.

"I never really saw the money anyway, it came in and went out ; if I felt like being successful I'd go and buy a new shirt"

A series of symbolic events unfold ( most notably a public school reunion and the pointless death of his new girlfriend )which only serve in Quint considering joining an equally exploitative competitor to the ad agency he quit at the outset.

This is wonderfully strange , a unique exploration ?

[jefadlm-1 · 9/10 · 1 March 2020]

Irrespective of any reviewer opinion, every viewer interprets what he or she sees hears or any scene , or entire narrative moves us to bring our own personal feelings, descriptive explanations and possibly some level of final personal outcome , verbalised on to this page ! We well remember Oliver Reed was a complicated character and possibly in real life portrayed various personal characteristics in the presence of some folk , which would be totally different for other people ? The British class system in the 1960s ( and to some extent due to some enbarrasment less so in rhe 2000s ) was horribly egocentric and to the uninitiated unfathomable ! One very weird example was the POUNDS SHILLINGS AND PENCE eccentric system of payment ! I never did fathom the illogicality of SIX PENCE ( which was a single coin partially made of silver ) which as seen in the supermarket as 6 D !!! That alone sums up BRITISH ecentricity , and then pile on top of that the egotistical garbage referred to by Orson ! ( a good exammple of a man unafraid of risks, however much danger might lie in wait to snare him ? This film (movie for those of that preference ? ) goes to a lot of trouble and the actors do the script justice in their portrayals of the trials and tribulations of overgrown children that could not come to terms with their own adulthood ! I was lucky enough to have a week of work on one of Winners comedies ! This serious narrative seems to show him as very competent and well directed by him. Whether true or not regarding Orson directing his scenes, I have no idea ? I could not discern any difference in style or aristic application ? So, for me that remains unknown. As I try to say at the start of this review, and in addition to that , i do feel this entertains and even educates , albeit entreched as it is in a time and space now of historical interest ? Bearing in mind many Brit eccentricities still stick like gooey glue which refuses to be killed off !