Come on Children

Canada

1972

95 Min

Color

1.66:1

English

Currently 3.8/5 Stars.
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CAST John Hamilton, Lesley Henry, Noreen McCallum, Ken Gibbs, Jo Anne Lye, Richard McMullen, Alan Dunikowski, Jane Harrison, Sharon Wall, Alex Zivojinovich

MUSIC John Hamilton, Alex Zivojinovich, Jack Zaza

SOUND Brian Avery, Paul Coombe

Synopsis

In the early 1970s, ten teenagers (five boys and five girls) leave behind parents, school, and all other authority figures to live on a farm for ten weeks. What emerges in front of Allan King’s cameras are the fears, hopes, and alienation of a disillusioned generation. Come on Children is a swift, vivid rendering of the growing pains of a counterculture. –The Criterion Collection

Director

Allan King

Internationally acclaimed Canadian filmmaker Allan King is among his country’s best filmmakers. His most famous film is his debut Warrendale, a wrenching documentary examination of life in a home for emotional disturbed teens. So brutal and disturbing was the 1966 made-for-television film that neither the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation nor the BBC would air the film. He released it theatrically in 1966 and it won a prize at Cannes and earned him a reputation as a major filmmaker. King was born and raised in Vancouver, British Columbia. Before becoming a director he obtained a degree in philosophy, worked as a cabbie and traveled throughout Europe. In 1954 he began working for the CBC and became a television director in 1956. During the ’60s, King began working independently as a director and producer. Later he took much of the footage he had not used in Warrendale and used it to create Children in Conflict, an 18-part television series. In addition to producing… read more

Wall

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Matthew Martens

28Mar13

Don't think twice, it's all pretty fucked up. King gives us not so much the counterculture as the confused, inarticulate drug culture it gave rise to. But all that to one side for a minute, who would have guessed when the film was released that the misfit who would emerge and make good in the world -- or at least become a star -- would be, not charismatic narcissist John Hamilton, but mumbling, grumbling Alex Zivojinovich? (Not his father, that seems certain.) Still, his unhinged solo improv for an audience of the ultra-zonked is the peak of this sordid circus.

jordaan mason

26Jan13

this is just some lazy drug-addict kids on vacation; i don't see how this can be considered "the growing pains of a counterculture." by the time they started arguing about how to cook the ham, i sort of checked out. the tension that worked in a film like "a married couple" kind of fell apart for me here; i was just bored.

TRILLYA KOVALCHUK

27Sep12

what the fucking fuck alex lifeson was in this

Joriah Goad

13Nov10

As a document of the era this is a quintessential ornament. Now on the value of the content- I believe in the documentary world that relies on the subjects. On the surface you have a doped out uneducated masqurerade; and, as if the treasure below was worth more than its weight in gold, you have 10 of those peg leg victims with clubhouse funhouse "nothingness is freedom" backyard orphan syndrome.

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