I am a fan of Saint Etienne. I am a postwar history obsessive. I love the Barbican. So the screening of Saint Etienne's archive film How We Used To Live at the Barbican last night was pretty much my idea of a perfect night out.
This archive collage film directed by Paul Kelly was inspired by Terence Davies' hymn to Liverpool, Of Time and the City. But Saint Etienne and Kelly already have their own style – a kind of melancholy nostalgia for the recent past, from defunct musical genres to lost urban landscapes. And here they have pulled together huge amounts of archive film – some of which was familiar to me, much of which was not – and created a compelling, beautiful and moving portrait of postwar London.
With so much diverse footage, there are three principal things that hold the film together. Firstly the clips have been arranged into an overarching thematic story, from daybreak to sunset, work to home, youth subcultures to a running joke at the expense of the Royal Family. Secondly, to emphasise the narrative there is the lightest of narration from Ian McShane, written by Bob Stanley and Travis Elborough – speech that is as impressionistic as the samples from old film and TV that punctuate St Etienne's album So Tough, for example. And finally - and perhaps most impressively - there is Pete Wiggs' score, an epic soundtrack every bit as moving, warm and evocative as the film footage.
They played the score live last night at the Barbican. I have only seen this done twice before. Once was when Saint Etienne performed their soundtrack to their film (again with Paul Kelly) about the Festival of Britain, This Is Tomorrow, at the Festival Hall. The other time was when Philip Glass performed Koyaanisqatsi at the Barbican alongside a screening of the 1982 film. I found that a magical, immersive, emotional experience, and that's how I found How We Used To Live too. If you get a chance to see the film at a screening, go – if you like the old films I post on this blog, you won't regret it.