The Light Fantastic (1960)

The Radar read

A quieter title still finding its audience, though the rating rests on a thin sample, so treat it as provisional.

Synopsis

While most of Ken Russell's documentaries for the BBC's Monitor arts strand focused on a single creative figure, he would also occasionally make more wide-ranging surveys of the state of a particular art. The Light Fantastic (BBC, tx. 18/12/1960) was written and presented by Ron Hitchins, a Cockney barrow boy who has long been interested in a great many dance forms, and who has recently taken up Spanish dancing. Hitchins participates in some of the dance sequences, but his main contribution is an enthusiastic commentary that helps personalise what could have been simply a disparate collection of dance footage. He's not shy about expressing likes and dislikes, being none too keen on ballroom dancing (too choreographed), rock'n'roll (too monotonous) and Morris dancing (just doesn't like it), though anything genuinely spontaneous gets a thumbs up, even if it's a room full of people dressed in black swaying to the sound of a gong.

Synopsis and metadata sourced from The Movie Database (TMDB).

Radar blends quality, momentum and freshness into one “what to watch now” number — so a great older film can sit lower than a rising new release. The Quality signal above is the time-neutral rating, which is why an acclaimed classic keeps a high quality score even when its Radar number is lower. Radar outputs are editorial algorithmic recommendations, not objective facts, and may change as signals update. A Radar score is not the same as a TMDB, IMDb or critic rating. How scoring works (v3.0).