Reviews

Directors Cary and Darke have been exploring the world of professional football over the course of several films now. Never Walk Alone traced the evolution of a Broadway song to an anthem sung on English football terraces. Their last film, The Crazy Gang, traced the history of the now dissolved Wimbledon FC, and particularly their unexpected rise to the highest tier of football in the 1980s, playing a direct, unfashionable style. Where that film focuses on the strength of being outsiders, this documentary offers the flip-side of that experience, isolation and alienation. In The Crazy Gang, we saw one of its architects, John Fashanu, in full-on self-promotion mode, mixing myth and reality to position himself as a 'hard-man' to rival his team-mate, and future film star, Vinnie Jones. In Forbidden Games, we see a very different John, contrite, emotional, bordering on vulnerable as he remembers his broken relationship with his ill-fated older brother and fellow professional footballer Justin. John all-but disowned him when Justin came out as gay in the early 1990s, making him the only professional footballer to do so whilst still playing. The film tells his story, from Justin and John as orphaned brothers in the impossibly white Norfolk village of Shropham, through early success on the pitch with Norwich FC, to decline and his ultimate death in 1998, in auspicious circumstances. A generous budget has been furnished on the documentary, taken up by Netflix, and the directors take advantage of sweeping aerial camerawork, re-purposed photos and reconstructions of the Fashanu brothers' early life. It seems strange seeing Britain from an outsiders perspective, with titles stating things like 'London, England' throughout, which reminds us that this film is less about football but about the tortured life of an individual who never fully felt accepted, having been sent away from his parents as a boy, shunned by clubs because of his lifestyle choices and disowned by his little brother. Its an engrossing story, ultimately tragic, especially considering Justin is still a rarity, as a self-outed footballer. Despite the slight distraction of Hollywood-style visual techniques, Cary and Darke do well to let the story tell itself, with insightful, and subjective (even damaging) contributions from those who knew him.

I recently saw a copy of this at the BFI and I have to disagree with the other reviews on this page. Although some of the dialogue (by Edgar Allan Poe) may come across as slightly stilted, this is a small distraction from what is, essentially, an undiscovered curiosity (it is not currently commercially available). Director Brian Desmond Hurst (John Ford's cousin, according to urban myth) went on to bigger things, most notably Alastair Sim's classic Scrooge (1951) adaptation, but maybe not more interesting. This is an expressionistic tour-de-force, on a par visually at least with the revered 'horror'classics of that school (really!), The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari. Nosferatu etc The camera-work is fluid and expressive and both the sound and visual editing is excellent, all the more remarkable in an era when few British film-makers, Hitchcock and a very select group of others aside, were seen to have mastery in true visual expertise. Even reviewers of the time, usually reserved in their praise of British film-makers, recognised that this was a truly unique exercise in British film. In short, this film demands to be seen on so many levels.