The latest in our ongoing series of writers highlighting their most rewatched comfort movies is a trip back to 1980s London and the predatory music industry
I
used to watch Breaking Glass when I worked a very corporate job in the City. With its vision of London at the end of punk and the beginning of the Winter of Discontent, the film provided me a blast of gritty, unvarnished relief in the light of endless training courses and encouraged groupthink.
Released in September 1980, it was disliked by critics (Q magazine memorably quipped: “Breaking Glass? More like Breaking Wind … ”) but through today’s eyes feels relevant again.
Kate Crowley (Hazel O’Connor) is an idealistic singer on the make. Her songs (“inspired by punk”) have an anti-capitalist stance. “Most people knuckle under,” she explains at the start of the yarn. “I don’t like the way life is for the majority of people. I can’t change it but I can write about it.” The ripped-from-the-headlines, on-the-nose, Bowie-esque songs illustrate Kate’s anti-authoritarian stance (“The people in control don’t care for you / You’re just a robot with a job to do,” she sings in Big Brother). Meanwhile, the tropical disco song One More Time by Susan ‘Susie’ Sapphire (a more palatable, typical blond singer) becomes a hit due to payola and record company muscle and then becomes an ominous motif throughout the film. A portent for Kate and her career as the film drives to its shocking conclusion.
