DELETED SCENE 01

PLACEMENT

After Opening Titles, at the beginning of SCENE 01: ECONOMIST PLAZA / ST. JAMES'S STREET

NOTES

This was the beginning of the original script.

SCRIPT

It is early morning in London.

The iron skeleton of a skyscraper under construction.

In an old forge used as a studio, a sculptor solders a tube to a sheet of metal.

Chelsea Art School: a girl stares out of the window, lost in thought.

She is standing in front of some of her unfinished paintings: brightly coloured circles.

On the other side of a partition, a young man is painstakingly covering a canvas with tiny converging stripes.

In another hall a group of art students – teenage boys and girls – are busy drawing two naked women, both of them hideous.

A school for models.

Girls rhythmically roam about the room, drilled by their tutor.

A rag: students in bizarre clothes and with white paint powdered faces making a collection in the street.

A horde of hurrying people surges out of an Underground station dressed in widely differing ways: some of the women are in curious garments, years out of date, others – in very short skirts.

Long-haired boys stroll in front of Carnaby Street shop windows.

Young men of the smart set are playing polo in a sunlit park.

Another park: it is raining on the swans gliding over the lake.

A third park: wind-swayed branches.

A couple of lovers roll on the grass.

Bill – a slender young artist in his early thirties, wearing a pale blue shirt and white trousers – is unrolling a large sheet of paper across the floor of his studio.

He pins it to the floorboards with a special gadget.

His wife, Patricia, is in the kitchen making coffee.

She pours the coffee and carries it towards Bill.

She is a young woman, hiding under her calm appearance, a passionate nature, firmly controlled.

As she approaches her husband, she puts down the cup and then turns to look at the sheet of white paper stretched out on the floor, as though she were seeing something drawn on it which is, in fact, not there.

People at work in some offices – all is calm, quiet, orderly.

A bedroom in a state of wild disorder.

Jane, a strikingly beautiful young woman, is getting out of bed.

She sways over to a casual table and switches on the record player.

Deafening pop music fills the room.

The bleak courtyard of a Salvation Army hostel.

A small crowd of ragged down-and-outs is emerging from the main gate: old, young, all ages.

Among them is Thomas; he is a young man in his late twenties, dishevelled, unshaven for at least a fortnight.

As he moves away from the derelict group, he turns around the corner, reaches a blind alley, and climbs into a shining Aston Martin and drives off in true Silverstone style.

A Pop Group is rehearsing in a bare room.

Now and then they break off to work out some new gimmick: a gesture or a yell or something.

Jane comes out into the street and gets into a car beside a distinguished elderly man.

The car drives off.

Another car follows it, driven by a man of about thirty: his face is tense and hard.

The City is deserted because it is Saturday morning.

Thomas’s Aston Martin roars along the empty streets.

The Stock Exchange is deserted and looks spotless, like a cathedral.

Smithfield Market

Not much movement.

But still an impressive sight.

The slaughterhouse.

Empty.

But in the side-rails hundreds of head of cattle and horses.

A commercial photographer arranging various food-packets over a lawn, as though composing a still life.

People’s faces conveying a whole gamut of feelings – all lively.

Legs, a regiment of legs – all in short skirts.

Models in a street, posing for another photographer.

A group of scantily dressed models posing in a studio.

Another group: pop singers autographing records in a West End store.

Here, too, the music is deafening.

Mauve garbage bags in front of smart houses in some Belgravia mews.

Coloured clothes in shop windows along the King’s Road and Carnaby Street.

A Rolls-Royce with a woman much too bedecked in jewels, laughing.

The car with Jane and the elderly gentleman is a dark green Alvis.

It is still trailed by the other car, a gun-metal Rover.

The eyes of its driver are glued to the Alvis.

Jane appears to be glancing occasionally at the mirror as if to see whether the Rover is following them.

The elderly man driving the Alvis looks positively pleased to have such a lovely young girl at this side.