Big Banana Feet review: How Billy Connolly’s genius shone in the dark days of The Troubles, writes ALAN CHADWICK
Big banana feet
Glasgow Film Festival
There is a seminal moment in this long-lost documentary about Billy Connolly’s 1975 tour to Dublin and Belfast, where the Big Yin, dressed in his iconic banana boots, picks up a rose from the stage of Belfast’s ABC Cinema. only to pretend it’s a bomb.
It’s a dark, tense, off-the-cuff moment. (To put it in context, just weeks earlier, three members of the cabaret group The Miami Showband had been murdered by a paramilitary group while on tour in Ireland.)
It is also a comic genius that shows Connolly at his iconoclastic best: a jester who holds up a mirror to the volatile nature and horrors of the time, while taking the tension away from the audience.
Still from Big Banana Feet, Billy Connolly’s documentary, screening at this year’s Glasgow Film Festival.
Billy Connolly on stage wearing big banana boots. He seemed nervous about performing in Northern Ireland
Filmmaker Murray Grigor, shot over a weekend with a handheld camera, based on DA Pennebaker’s iconic Bob Dylan rockumentary, Don’t Look Back
The film, which was shown in a restored print, was thought to have been lost after the distributor went bankrupt. Nearly fifty years later, an archivist saw a copy on eBay and bought it for £50.
It was made at the height of the Troubles, and Connolly is clearly nervous about playing the North. Clips show soldiers patrolling outside and inside the venue.
But when questioned in Dublin about the possibility of being blown up in Belfast, the Big Yin replied: ‘I’m scared when I really think about it. I don’t feel like a crusader or anything. But I sell a lot of records there and they asked me, so I thought, “What the heck?”
Filmmaker Murray Grigor, shot over a weekend with a portable camera, based on Don’t Look Back, Bob Dylan’s iconic rockumentary by DA Pennebaker.
The film follows Connolly both on and off stage, offering a fascinating insight into his early work and the down-to-earth attitude of the welder turned comedian just as he’s on the brink of stardom.
But while Don’t Look Back exposed Dylan as a kind of prima donna, Big Banana Feet shows Connolly’s communal streak.
The film follows Connolly both on and off stage and offers a fascinating insight into his early work
Upon arriving in Dublin and being told he’s ‘a bigger guy than I thought’, the Big Yin cheekily replies: ‘Oh, I’m very big in Glasgow’
Billy Connolly Tartan Day Parade, New York, USA in 2019
When he arrives in Dublin and is told he’s “a bigger guy than I thought,” the Big Yin quickly replies, “Oh, I’m very big in Glasgow.”
At his most relaxed when charming the tea ladies backstage at his show, he doesn’t seem happy about the fact that he has a list of all the major stars (Burton and Taylor; Kim Novak; Rod Stewart) who have stayed in his swanky hotel suite. rhymed by the manager.
The film also features the hilarious comedy songs – pastiches of Oh Boy and Help Me Make It Through the Night – that the former folk singer peppered his act and early albums.
It’s also interesting to witness routines that are fresh out of the box and have since passed into folklore, such as the Glasgow drunk who gets nowhere fast because only one leg works. The comedian, now 81, retired from stand-up in 2018 as Parkinson’s disease took its increasingly debilitating toll.
That makes this look back at one of Scotland’s favorite sons in all his glory a joy to watch as he takes his first steps to conquer the world in his own unstoppable style. If anything, this glimpse into the beginnings of a comedy legend and national treasure is too short at 77 minutes.