Nuts in May — Nuts in May( Blu Ray)
Released first in 1976 as an episode of the BBC series Play for Today, Nuts in May was the breakthrough film for English screenwriter/director Mike Leigh. It’s a dark comedy drama/tragicomedy about a city-dwelling middle-class husband and wife going camping in the countryside. The film blends cringe inducing/ awkward humour, glum travel logging, with plenty of pathos. It not only helped launch Leigh as a household name but also became generally influential to the likes of The Office, Ben Wheatley's Sight Seers & much more. Here from BFI is a recent Blu-ray release, taking in a new 4k scan and a decent enough selection of mainly archive extras.
Nuts in May was first aired on the evening of the 13th January 1976- been filmed in June/ July the previous year in Devon. The film runs at the one hour and twenty-one-minute mark.
The film focuses on middle-class husband and wife Keith Pratt (Roger Sloman) and Candice Marie (Alison Steadman). Both are smug, opinionated, and unpleasant- though Keith is probably the worst of the two- as added to everything he constantly belittles & miniplates his wife.
Keith is a bearded, balding & flat cap-wearing civil servant- who is very much a know it all/ full of boring facts. And the blond-haired, bespeckled Candice works in a toy shop- and is a slightly lisp-bound hippy.
We open to see the pair in their Morris Minor travelling on a car ferry, and countryside roads, as the pair's awful folk music song about going to a zoo plays- with painful warbling vocals and bland guitar strumming.
Anyway, they pull up at the set in a woodland campsite, and we get the first idea of Keith's personality- he’s rather curt with the campsite owner when she asks for prepayment, pulling out his notebook to note the payment. And when she asks if they want eggs & milk, he turns them down- as the eggs are not free-range & the milk is pasteurised.
As the film unfolds, the pair goes on trips, encounters others at the camp, as well as, of course, interacting with each other. The film, I guess, has a fairly lose/ some could say not terribly eventful flow- but it’s all about the interactions/ the pair's smug & grating personalities.
Both leads are on top form- well & truly dropping into their characters. There’s a small supporting cast, and things later shift to a truly toe-curling stand off/ fight. The whole thing is filmed in a simplistic/ naturalistic manner- with no formal score- the only music is created by the pair, or those they meet.
The new 4k scan looks good, and really surprisingly for a film that shot fifty years ok- it doesn’t really look dated. On the extras side, we only have one new thing on the disc itself, and that’s a sit-down interview with Mike Leigh ( 14. 34). He starts by discussing how Keith and Candice Marie's characters first appeared in the 1975 stage play Wholesome Glory- which saw the pair inviting Keith’s brother around to their house. He talks about how he very much wanted it to be a Dorset-based film, and it features some genuine Dorset characters. We find out where the Candice Marie name came from, what it was like filming on the out-of-season campsite, and the meaning of the weird back-and-forth looping of the pig in the final shot- we also get to see some great behind-the-scenes photos too. So this is well worth checking out.
On the archive side, we get a great selection of things. Director and cast Q&A (43.00) a 2021 audio-only interview with Mike Leigh, Alison Steadman, Roger Sloman, Anthony O’Donnell, Sheila Kelley and Stephen Bill are reunited on stage at BFI Southbank. BFI London Film Festival 2024 Screen Talk: Mike Leigh (48.02 ): celebrating the 2024 release of his film Hard Truths, Leigh discusses his career with writer and journalist Amy Raphael. The Country Comes to Town (21.18): a 1933 documentary made to help modernise the image of farming and the British countryside. Spring Comes to England (14.57): a 1934 documentary on the journey produce makes from field to market – including Candice Marie’s favourite, mushrooms Winter on the Farm ( 14.22): a 1941 public information film on Upton Manor Farm in Dorset. The Chiffy Kids: Pot Luck (19.04): from 1976 Children’s Film Foundation favourites take a holiday under canvas Play Safe: Camping and Fishing (1.04): a 1978 safety awareness film showing the dangers lurking in the countryside.
The first release of the Blu-ray comes with an illustrated booklet with essays on Nuts in May by Mike Leigh, John Wyver and Dr Adam Scovell and writing on the archive films by Ellen Cheshire and Vic Pratt.
It certainly is wonderful to see this classic/ highly influential comedy/ drama back in print again- as really, without it, so much awkward/ cringe inducing modern comedy would not exist. This BFI release features a great-looking 4 K print, and a most interesting selection of extras.