Middle-aged Charlie Bubbles (Albert Finney) resents how famous he is. A world-renowned author who has dominated London as one of its great artists, he’s amassed fame and adoration from countless fans who are endeared to his unconventional style of writing and ability to tell a story that resonates with all of them. He decides that he momentarily wants to leave London, and return to his old stomping group, the working-class suburbs of Manchester, where not only did he begin his career, but also houses his ex-wife Lottie (Billie Whitelaw) and young son, Jack (Timothy Garland), who has grown up without a father. Charlie hopes to mend his relationship with both the woman who fell victim to his inability to handle the perils of fame and the child whose life he has only watched from afar. Desperate to form a relationship with his son, Charlie momentarily surrenders himself to the ideals of his old hometown, only to learn that while he can’t survive without Manchester, the city has been perfectly capable of going on without the supposed brilliance of one of its most famous sons. With his secretary and occasional lover, Eliza (Liza Minnelli) by his side, and armed with enough disillusionment with modern life to make his swift escape, Charlie sets off on a voyage of self-discovery, where he hopes to atone for his past misdeeds and find the fulfilment no amount of fame and acclaim could ever give him.

Charlie Bubbles is a fascinating film, not only because of the story it tells but also what it stands for. A bit of an outlier in terms of British films being made at the time – no less a result of this being the first and only theatrical film Albert Finney ever directed – it takes some unexpected turns, being a stylish and intensely complex work of tragicomedy that resembles many works produced during this period, yet still stands out as an example of a very different set of ideals. Finney, while certainly not someone whose directorial skills we can (or should) criticize, made a bold choice in helming a film that was clearly designed as a vehicle for him to explore a character that would not really have a place in more conventional films, and capitalizes on his status as one of the more interesting leading men of his generation, an insular talent who could play any role without losing an iota of the authenticity he brought to all of them. Charlie Bubbles is certainly not a conventional debut for a director, especially because its quite clear how it was derived from some more abstract concepts not really prominent in either the great epics, or the small-scale kitchen-sink realist films, and thus came to constitute a genre all on its own, a kind of subversive satire that stops just short of being complete postmodern, but still has slight tinges of surrealism for good measure. A great deal of this can be attributed to screenwriter Shelagh Delaney, who was taking a sabbatical from her own hyper-realistic portrayals of British culture to collaborate with Finney on this bewildering comedy that goes to some very strange places, even when it is at its most lucid and coherent.

An adequate way to describe what Finney and Delaney are doing with Charlies Bubbles is to categorize this story as less of a coherent stream of thought, but rather as a series of vignettes of culture, thrown together in a way that evokes the relentlessly fast-paced lifestyle of the city at the time, which it then contrasts with the pastoralism of the more rural, working-class Mancunian suburbs in which the titular character seeks his refuge. The film has the appearance of a trendy 1960s London odyssey, with the retro standards that pervaded the culture during this time, a result of a more liberal mentality taking over, and the influence of increased global interactions, converging into this idiosyncratic portrayal of a different side of London, one that isn’t necessarily more bleak or haunting, but rather slightly more authentic in showing how it can be quite overwhelming for an artist to always be surrounded by like-minded collaborators and adoring fans. Finney combines the authenticity of smaller dramas with the spirit of some of the great British epics that dominated prior to this, some of which he was even a part of, in how the story centres on one extraordinary individual setting off on a journey to retrieve something of value. In this case, his quest takes the form of an escape, and he’s searching for a way to enrich his life, moving away from the carnal excess of fame, and looking for something deeper. Charlie is one of the quintessential tortured artists, whose hunger is always insatiable, regardless of what form it takes – so in order to actually find some resolution to what plagues him, he needs to engage in some kind of (meta)physical travail, in the hopes of finding what he so desperately seeks.

In this regard, Charlie Bubbles is essentially a film that simply focuses on the perils of being a celebrity, long before this concept became vogue and the subject of countless provocative satires about how fame is as joyful as it is dangerous. Escape is a theme that recurs throughout the film, with Charlie doing everything he can to shift perception from writer to other social roles – whether it be lover, father or simply just an ordinary citizen, his reputation follows him everywhere and manifests in how, regardless of how much he tries to conceal it and shrug his achievements off through annoyance masquerading as humility, he will never be able to change that his artistry warped him into a public figure, and he needs to play the part. The titular character in this film is one of cinema’s great hedonists, someone who has earned a reputation that has afforded him so much excess, he no longer has any use for it, with his passion now going into achieving something far more elusive – normality. Charlie Bubbles is a film that is so intent on exploring this character and his tumultuous relationship with fame, the only way it could feasibly end would be to have the protagonist finally just resigning from his efforts and just absconding from his entire life, flying away in a hot-air balloon, presumably never to be seen again – so naturally, it does just that.

The theme of individuality, and its role in forming one’s identity, are omnipotent in Charlie Bubbles, in which Albert Finney and Shelagh Delaney put together a compelling story of a man who is shielding his own insecurities behind a thin veneer of acclaim that tends to distract from his more questionable flaws, which eventually come through when he decides to take a break from his career and venture into the past. Homecoming is vital to Charlie Bubbles – London is bold, colourful and excessive, and features a pace that very few could ever hope to keep up with. Inversely, Manchester (which the character clearly has a strong connection to as a result of his upbringing) is warm, endearing and charming – but still evades Charlie, who finds himself struggling to make sense of a city he knew so well. Throughout this film, Finney takes on an impressive amount of content in how he represents the polarity of the two worlds the main character finds himself in – with the strength coming in the moments where the implication says more than any coherent utterance, he builds a fascinating character study that manages to make quite an impression, even when it’s at its most subtle. Featuring brief flirtations with the surreal, as well as taking inspiration from many other genres, Charlie Bubbles is an exceptionally poignant film that may appear to be a warmhearted, but mindless, comedy on the surface, but has an extraordinary depth that cannot be understated, resulting in a wonderfully quaint, but also remarkably complex, human drama.