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Today, as Cathy McGowan points out, "the war is over. The Mods have won." Nothing is so Out, so totally not with it, as greasy dungarees and black leather jackets (though a few rebels still hang around, disconsolately gunning their motorcycles). The latest In look for girls is the very skinny look, striped jersey dresses, a lot of yellow, trench coats, berets (especially knitted ones), granny shoes (mostly yellow, please) and big earrings. Just as the '30s look is already returning for men (wider ties, big lapels, black and white shoes), some fashion designers believe that it is on its way for women and will force their hemlines down again.
Dirty, Filthy, Healthy. The same experimentation, the same passion for change, permeates London's theater, which is currently the best anywhere in the world. The theater is one of the strongest cultural contributors to the liveliness of London today, brimming with new ideas and with new young people who are nonetheless working within a long and powerful creative tradition. Says Peter Hall of the Royal Shakespeare Company: "We are in a theater that is front-page news. We are denounced as subversive, immoral, filthy —it's all terribly healthy." John Osborne is one of the world's richest playwrights, though still as acid as ever: his latest, A Patriot for Me, is all about homosexuality in decadent Vienna.
There are as many as 40 or 50 plays on the London stage in any given week, and it costs little more to see one than to go to a movie. However, says Peter Hall, "we've got rid of that stuffy middle-aged lot that go to the theater as a sop for their prejudices. We're getting a younger audience who are looking for experiences and will take them from the latest pop record or Hamlet." The In Hamlet this year is David Warner, 24, who plays the Dane with Beatle haircut and a Carnaby Street slouch.
This spring, film makers from all over the world have been attracted to London by its swinging film industry, whose latest export to the U.S. is Morgan!, a hilarious piece of insanity. Charlie Chaplin is making The Countess from Hong Kong with Marlon Brando and Sophia Loren. Francois Truffaut is just finishing Fahrenheit 451 with Julie Christie and Oskar Werner. Roman Polanski is making a horror satire called The Vampire Killers. Robert Aldrich is starting up a war film called The Dirty Dozen, and Sidney Lumet is working with Maximilian Schell, James Mason and Simone Signoret in The Deadly Affair. For the past several weeks, Michelangelo Antonioni has been prowling the streets of London, looking toward making a film on—of all things—the swinging London scene. His cryptic testimonial to what he has seen: "London offers the best and the worst in the world."
Greenness & Greyness. For all its virtues, which are many, and its faults, which are considerable, London has a large measure of that special quality that was once the hallmark of great cities: civility in the broadest sense. It takes away less of a person's individuality than most big cities, and gives the individual and his rights more tolerance than any. In texture, it has developed into a soft, pleasant place in which to live and work, a city increasing its talents for organizing a modern society without losing the simple humanity that so many urban complexes lack.