1985 was an annus mirabilis for harsh Liverpool comedies, both of them. Letter to Brezhnev, about two Liver birds wooed by Soviet sailors, was the quintessential grassroots production of the British Film Renaissance. No Surrender, Alan Bleasdale’s sole foray into cinema, was a £2 million epic farce about sectarian fury erupting when two coachloads of OAPs are double booked into a Stanley Road nightclub one New Year’s Eve. (A group of infirm geriatrics, wailing and flailing, also materialises.) Arriving on DVD this month, it has lost none of its edge as a bracing blend of reality, absurdity and caustic Scouse wit.
As head of the NFFC, Mamoun Hassan invited script proposals from Bleasdale after seeing some of Boys From the Blackstuff. Bleasdale suggested No Surrender, which Hassan greenlit when he formed an independent company. As he says in a supplementary interview, Bleasdale writes great characters (as opposed to great images, which would be director Peter Smith’s domain) and he wrote several here. The most formidable is Ray McAnally’s steely Orange Lodge leader, who has renounced violence but is saddled with a blackmailing Protestant murderer (JG Devlin); their scenes together indicate a lethal mutual history.
Hassan and Smith are candid in the making-of featurette: the seniors were game but moved slowly and delayed the shoot; Bleasdale resented cuts to the script; the film’s had its biggest success on VHS. The chaos was worth it, however, for No Surrender is a dark delight.
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