A leather-booted mod shows his buttoned-up flatmate how to lure the ladies in director Richard Lester's hyperkinetic follow-up to A Hard Day's Night, a vision of then-emerging Swinging London that startled critics with its "way-out" energy and won the grand prize at the 1965 Cannes film festival. With his skinny ties and Beat-honed pickup lines ("Would you like to come up and listen to records? You'd like Thelonious,") Tolen (Ray Brooks) entertains a seemingly endless parade of miniskirted, tight-sweatered lovelies. Lacking "the knack," his flatmate Colin (Michael Crawford) turns to Tolen for advice, and together they set their sights on a country girl (Rita Tushingham, A Taste of Honey) whose naive appearance conceals a savvy heart. Lester gleefully smashes the film's lad's-world, Benny Hill–like plot into Godardian shards, replacing any semblance of ordered storytelling with a liberated chaos of sped-up motion, rewound scenes, narrative gimmicks, and frenetic hand-held camera work, all bursting with the energy of London's new generation.

—Jason Sanders

• Written by Charles Wood, from the play by Ann Jellicoe. Photographed by David Watkin. With Ray Brooks, Michael Crawford, Rita Tushingham, Donal Donnelly. (84 mins, B&W, 35mm, From MGM)