Berlin International Film Festival 2000

The Filth and the Fury by Julien Temple

"Words are my weapons," meditates John Lydon (Johnny Rotten) in Julien Temple's abrasive new documentary about the Sex Pistols, The Filth And The Fury. "Violence is something I'm not very good at."

Temple has already been this way before in his 1980 feature, The Great Rock And Roll Swindle. But there is an important difference about the new film: the remaining members of the band are allowed to speak for themselves. The one key figure not interviewed is the Pistols' old manager (and would-be London mayor) Malcolm McLaren who the band clearly resent.

It is strange to think that it is now more than a quarter of a century since Wally Nightingale had the idea of forming the band. When Temple showed the film to 20-year-olds, "a lot of them thought it was fiction... they thought the Jubilee was a tube line and that Sid was imprisoned for shooting the audience during My Way... it's astonishing how alien that era was to them."

Geoffrey Macnab