Having already incurred a BBC ban with his nuclear attack mockumentary The War Game, director Peter Watkins pointed his savagely satirical camera at the music business. Privilege, first seen in 1967, focuses on a messianic pop figure manipulated by the authorities to help keep the hollow-headed masses in line.

Paul Jones, recently departed from Manfred Mann, plays the reluctant puppet Steven Shorter, and in truth his talent for acting is only marginally better than wooden supermodel du jour Jean Shrimpton as his girlfriend and only ally. But it's Watkins' theories on fame and control that give the movie its power, imagining a shallow world of placebo celebrity that is arguably today's norm (The X Factor, Big Brother).

Cinematically, it clearly influenced the likes of The Man Who Fell To Earth, A Clockwork Orange and Ken Russell's flawed vision of The Who's Tommy, although its lengthy unavailability has perhaps lent it a revered status it doesn't fully deserve. The darkly dystopian premise still makes for enthusiastic debate, if not wholly satisfying viewing.

A version of this review appears in the next issue of the UK music magazine Record Collector

http://www.recordcollectormag.com/