CHARLIE BUBBLES (1968) - movie poster painting (prototype)

Unused Vic Fair conceptual movie poster painting for the UK 1968 presentation, Charlie Bubbles. There is a nice 1960s psychedelic feel to the artwork, which would have made a much better poster than the one that was issued as the front-of-house cinema advertising campaign, in my opnion (see additional images) . . .

"Charlie Bubbles is a 1968 British comedy-drama film starring Billie Whitelaw and Albert Finney, and also featuring a young Liza Minnelli. It was listed to compete at the 1968 Cannes Film Festival, but the festival was cancelled due to the events of May 1968 in France.

Much of the film depicts the world from the mind of the person, whereby the viewer becomes Charlie so we see much of the film through the eyes of a clever but melancholy and dissatisfied observer of life. The character Charlie Bubbles was almost type-casting for Finney; he had risen to film-stardom from a background as a bookie's son in the neighbouring, mainly working class Pendleton district of Salford. Charlie Bubbles was not only Albert Finney's debut as a director but was also the last time he directed a box office film.

The film is a slightly surreal offshoot of the kitchen sink drama in which Finney had achieved stardom in Karel Reisz's Saturday Night and Sunday Morning of 1960. Shelagh Delaney had also achieved fame as the writer of another film in this genre, Tony Richardson's 1961 A Taste of Honey. Delaney also wrote Lindsay Anderson's 1967 film The White Bus like Charlie Bubbles, set in part in Manchester and Salford, which has a distinctly surreal feel to it at times. Charlie Bubbles is referred to in the Kinks' song "Where Are They Now?", on the album Preservation Act 1 and the film was released on DVD in September 2008."