I Start Counting (1970, David Greene, UK/ USA: Triumvirate Productions)

Wynne Kinch (Jenny Agutter) was adopted. She had been raised Catholic by her mother, but at some stage prior to seven, still old enough to know about what was happening, she was put up for adoption and taken into a loving family with two older brothers. Considerably older. Of the brothers, George (Bryan Marshall) is her favourite. And now, at the age of fourteen, Wynne's familial love is turning into a sexually driven lust and obsession. Denying that it is incest because she was adopted, Wynne feels completely justified in having sexual urges towards her thirty-two year old brother. This leads to frustration that he does not see her in that way, but merely as his younger sister.

Wynne (Jenny Agutter) wants George (Bryan Marshall) to see her as a woman

Wynne and her adoptive family live in a new high rise block in Bracknell, Berkshire. Everything around her is either white or concrete, and all of it new, yet she still yearns to spend time in their old home: a large, crumbling farmhouse on the other side of the park. It is condemned and marked for demolition, like all of the other Victorian property we see in the area. Anything not brand new, it seems, is unwanted. Wynne's mother (Madge Ryan) exclaims to her father (Billy Russell), who also lives with them, "This place is a palace compared to where we used to live." "Oh yes?" he replies, "and you name me a palace where the doorknobs keep falling off." There is something rotten at the heart of this new brutalist utopia.

This crumbling facade not only represents the forbidden love at the centre of the family, but the possibility that George may be a killer of young women. Bodies have been found in the park near their old home, and the police are seemingly without a lead. When Wynne spots scratch marks on George's back, and finds his jumper covered in blood, she begins to suspect that maybe he is the culprit. Far from putting her off, this causes her love for him to grow stronger, feeling a need to protect him. Only she truly understands him and can help him. She fantasises about George kissing her, or walking in on her in the bath. Wynne confesses her sinful thoughts to a priest during the day, and caresses herself in bed at night.

Throughout the film she becomes an amateur detective, following him around and searching for clues in his bedroom. The occasional red herring is also thrown in, such as the interest her other brother, the pill-popping Len (Gregory Phillips), shows in the grisly details as reported in the press: "You'd think if he was going to kill all these people, he'd at least rape them. It seems such a waste." He even keeps a scrapbook of press cuttings, a sure sign of any serial killer. There is also the occasional appearance of a potentially sleazy bus conductor (Simon Ward), who grabs Wynne by the wrist and tells her "Your skirt's too short." Ultimately Wynne does solve the crime, and in the process is forced to grow up and learn a few unpleasant things about life.

I Start Counting begins with a long panning shot around Wynne's bedroom, and the opening credits then roll over her morning routine. We see her open curtains, eat breakfast and get dressed. Continuing her routine, and in full close-up, Wynne pulls on her underwear, puts on a bra and gets into her school uniform, of which the skirt is short. This is one of those films which belongs in the same category as Baby Love (1968, Alastair Reid, UK: Avton Films), All The Right Noises (1971, Gerry O'Hara, UK: Trigon Productions) or Twinky (1970, Richard Donner, UK/ Italy: World Film Services), where schoolgirls are objects of sexual awakening and desire. Twinky's tagline (on the US poster, where it had been renamed Lola) was the astonishing "She's almost 16, he's almost 40." Pop music also contributed to this concept, whether it was Neil Sedaka singing in 1961 "Happy birthday sweet sixteen, Tonight's the night I've waited for, Because you're not a baby anymore," or the Rolling Stones cheerfully proclaiming "There'll be a feast if you just come upstairs, But it's no hanging matter, It's no capital crime, I can see that you're fifteen years old, No I don't want your I.D." in 1968. 

Jenny Agutter may have been seventeen, but the schoolgirl she was portraying was fourteen.
The creepy rabbit to the left plays a small part in the plot.

Wynne Kinch may have been fourteen in I Start Counting but Jenny Agutter was seventeen, eighteen by the time the film was released. This may serve as some sort of justification in shooting her dressing in such a voyeuristic fashion, or in the way the camera often looks up the miniskirt of her friend Corinne (Claire Sutcliffe), whose colourful knickers are flashed throughout the film, despite her also being fourteen. Agutter also posed for a series of blatantly sexual photos to promote the film, perhaps demonstrating just how much of a woman Wynne has become despite her young age. 1960s and 1970s culture was preoccupied with the first flowerings of sexual desire in teenage girls (and underage girls). Sadly the events of the last few years, and Operation Yewtree in particular, have taught us the dark truth behind this cultural acceptability.

According to the 1970 edition of The British Film & Television Year Book, if you had wanted to reach Jenny Agutter she could be contacted care of Denys Becher, 9A Marylebone High Street, London, W.1.

The film is adapted from Audrey Erskine Lindop's novel from 1966, and the plot feels similar to the popular, although far more graphic, schoolgirl-based Italian crime films of Massimo Dallamano: What Have You Done to Solange? (Cosa avette fatto a Solange? 1972, Italy/ West Germany: Clodio Cinematografica) and What Have They Done to Your Daughters? (La polizia chiede aiuto, 1974, Italy: Primex Italia). Perhaps Dallamano was familiar with this film, or perhaps it is coincidence, but What Have You Done to Solange? is also set in Britain, and features the murder of a schoolgirl in a park. There are also similarities to the British thriller Assault (1971, Sidney Hayers, UK: George H. Brown Productions), which again features schoolgirls being murdered in parks. This was clearly a theme which needed exploring in the early 1970s.

The Pan Books tie-in edition of The Ravine by Kendal Young, now known as Assault.

I Start Counting was directed by David Greene, who had previously directed, amongst others, The Shuttered Room (1967, UK: Seven Arts) and The Strange Affair (1968, UK: Paramount Pictures), the latter also featuring an underage relationship, this time between a schoolgirl and a policeman. David Greene had angered many people when he burned down a real historic building in Norfolk at the climax of The Shuttered Room, the full story of which can be read here. I Start Counting also features the destruction of real property, and was perhaps something Greene looked for in his films as a way of enhancing production value. He had a varied and fascinating career, working in both film and TV between Hollywood and the UK. Monthly Film Bulletin praised his direction of this film, stating it was "a coherent and accomplished piece of filmmaking."

Sadly I Start Counting was only seen in Britain in the cinema in 1970, where it played with an AA certificate from the BBFC, and then again once on TV in the 1990s, as far as I can tell. It is a compelling and well-constructed film which was also hugely significant in the career of Jenny Agutter, coming out just a month before The Railway Children (1970, Lionel Jeffries, UK: EMI Film Productions). Monthly Film Bulletin describes her performance here as "Something of a remarkable balance, poised between naïveté and delicacy to suggest a perfectly natural innocent." If you want to see this performance the only way to currently view I Start Counting is on Youtube, where it appears to have been taken from a VHS copy. It is thankfully in its correct aspect ratio, which suggests the film was released on video in the U.S. in a widescreen version, unless it was shown on TV in widescreen and this is an off air recording. Perhaps eventually this will see a restored release as part of Network's ongoing British Collection. If you have any interest in British cinema of the period, I Start Counting is well worth your attention. And just what is it she is counting? Watch the film and see if you can work it out for yourself.