Smiths Derek Jarman videos

HANG THE D.J.?

A Smiths video? Never! Well, not after the last one. Instead the Messrs Schmidts have hired Derek Jarman to visually represent their music. ALAN JACKSON got an eyeful.

WELL DEL... perhaps that would be taking it a bit far. But call this a promotional video? Where are all the high heels, the fast cars and the flashy locations? Where are the illuminated paving stones and the fancy dance steps? And, most shameful neglect of all, where's the band itself?

So, The Queen Is Dead isn't your average promo clip, but then The Smiths aren't your usual pop music product either. Faced with the band's well-known reluctance to involve themselves in anything so obvious as a conventional marketing film, Rough Trade agreed to commission British film auteur Derek Jarman to interpret three of their songs - 'The Queen Is Dead' and 'There Is A Light That Never Goes Out' from the current album, plus the single 'Panic' (seen on last week's TOTP).

Jarman's own track record would hardly lead you to expect a re-run of Thriller - cart-loads of camp and bare bottoms in such homo-erotic oeuvres as Sebastian, The Angelic Conversation and the recent Caravaggio. But his highly-original vision and his Mozzer-like proclivity for sexual and political provocation means that the resulting 15-minute home movie is a welcome departure from the usual MTV-orientated image-shapers we've grown accustomed to.

Working with John Maybury, Richard Heslop and Chris Hughes, he's set 'The Queen Is Dead' to a jerky, hand-held-camera-in-black-and-white background of childhood flashbacks and urban anxiety; 'There Is A Light...' plays as a slow-panning lens moves across the body of a young boy in shorts, while 'Panic' fast-cuts in an impression of impending social collapse. Anti-monarchist and anti-establishment imagery abounds - there's even a bit of skull-kissing thrown in for good measure - and it's all enough to give the programmers at Saturday Superstore a few headaches, no matter how high 'Panic' rises in the charts. 

There are plans to screen the completed work on a Whistle Test special in September, but cinema audiences will be granted the first opportunity to cast a critical eye. The Queen Is Dead will be previewed at the Edinburgh Film Festival (The Film House, August 19 at 11pm), and will then begin a nationwide cinema tour as support to the new Alex Cox feature Sid And Nancy. London audiences should get their chance to see the promo too - negotiations are currently underway with major distributors, and a tie-up with the new Prince movie Under The Cherry Moon, to be released late this month, seems likely.

All of this is good news for Jarman's followers, but Smiths fans eager to see Morrissey tap-dancing or mugging to the camera may be in for a disappointment.