Wunnerfull, Wunnerfull

I guess the reason I’ve never seen Wonderwall (1968) is that pretty much no one has. Directed by Joe Masson in 1968, it was semi-famous for George Harrison’s score. But it didn’t get much distribution until it was re-released in the late 90s.

It stars Jack MacGowran (Fearless Vampire Killers) as a kind of mad scientist. He works all day peering through a brass microscope at what looks like a power station. He comes home to an apartment decorated with Pre-Rafaelite poetry and crowded with dusty stacks of books. When he turns out the lights, he notices that light from the apartment next door was projecting an image on the wall, camera obscura style. The image is of hippie chick and model Jane Birkin.

Maybe you know her as mother of Charlotte Gainsbourg. I know her as the girl who sang the orgasmic “Oui, je t’aime” in that French song. She is a very 60s girl, young, skinny, wild and innocent. Most of the movie is really just MacGowran watching through chinks in the dividing wall while she poses, dances, parties and makes love.

So that’s about it. There are some other characters, but not many. There’s some action, and it is both creepy and a little sweet. But mostly there’s George Harrison’s Indian classical music score, plus a little rock, including a song by the Remo Four, who sound a lot like Harrison.

There’s also some nice set decoration, both for the professor and for Birkin’s hippy pad. Note that she goes by the name Penny Lane in this. All in all, only worth it for the psychedelia.