The Great Rock ’n’ Roll Swindle (1980) 104m.

Directed by Julien Temple

As reviewed by Shane Burridge

One of two documentaries about seminal punk rock band the Sex Pistols released in 1980, one year after singer Sid Vicious died of a heroin overdose (the other being Lech Kowalski’s D.O.A.). If you didn’t know anything about their rise to fame you’d swear you were watching a SPINAL TAP-style spoof on a fictional band. That’s because first-time writer/director Julien Temple treats his subject with wild, footloosehumor. He mixes fictional narrative, archival footage, animated sequences, offbeat characters, and video clips of the band’s most well-known songs. Before the end the film’s reflexivity is layered on a little too thick, part of the reason why some viewers may find it tiresome. Others will just find it unwatchable, either because of the film’s puerile approach (the sex, profanity, and violence will ensure that it’s never shown on television) or because of the subject matter itself. Others may object to it on principle: that Pistols manager-cum-shyster Malcolm McLaren is having a big laugh at everyone’s expense. McLaren begins the film by enumerating the steps to make money through exploitation and demonstrates how he was able to manufacture a phenomenon from scratch. The ‘swindle’ isn’t only perpetrated on record companies that were duped (for a time) but also on consumers that bought into a trend that was arguably either anticipated or entirely fabricated by McLaren.

For those unfamiliar with the McLaren/Pistols story, SWINDLE provides an insightful primer: it pointedly illustrates the role of music in the music industry - i.e. it is negligible. Here is a document that proves all the cynics right - that it is only product that matters. McLaren is completely at ease before the camera, making us even more distrustful of him. He admits his ulterior motives with such cheerfulness that we get the feeling we can’t believe anything he says, even when he’s letting us in on his formula for success (his ten-point plan looks like it has been constructed retrospectively and not conceived beforehand). Film’s wackiness gets labored in the last fifteen minutes or so. Really, it would have been just as funny if Temple had played it straight and let this absurd story speak for itself (for example, when the Pistols played their first US tour, McLaren sent them straight to the heart of redneck country). The Pistols’ music actually holds up pretty well. Or is that a sign that new trends sound even worse?