British Film Institute

An afternoon punting on the Cam in the sunshine seems a straightforward enough pleasure. But this film refuses such a romantic view. It seizes on the repetitive, almost monotonous nature of going 'up, down and back', amplifying it with fragments of the internal monologues of the men in the punt.

These are sometimes melancholy, meditating on the nature of change - "change, all this changing. Better off at the beginning" - and sometimes buoyant, reminiscing about May Balls, falling from punts, etc.

Visually, too, such moods are expressed, sometimes at variance with the soundtrack. There is an elaborate ritual of photographing (forming and fixing memories); and additional stills are presented of the characters stranded in an alien concrete environment. In this way, constant subconscious strands of thinking emerge - ideas associated with time, movement, fixity and repetition all weaving around each other.

The effect is quite different from other films about subjective experiences and dreams which proliferated in the second half of the 1960s. By separating sound and image, this film ruthlessly cuts out fantasy rather than embellishing it.

BFI Productions Catalogue 1951-76

Click titles to see or read more