Dir. Franc Roddam | 1979 | 120 min

Set against the soundtrack of The Who’s 1973 mighty concept album Quadrophenia, Phil Daniels plays working-class Jimmy, the drug-induced Mod, who hates his job and is misunderstood by his parents. But by night, he comes alive, with the all-nighters, his pills and his scooter-riding friends. Always on a high, life can’t get any better. Then there’s the Brighton scooter run, where both Mods and Rockers converge, ending in the battle of the cults on Brighton Beach. What goes up must come down, and with Jimmy’s come-down, his life is turned around, and so begins his downward spiral into paranoia and isolation, and the four-faceted mindset: Quadrophenia. -The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema –IMDB, Cinema_Fan

Quadrophenia was made in 1979, at the height of the British punk movement, and the filmmakers contemplated casting a punk musician as the lead, to lend Jimmy an authentic air of rebellion. They considered Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols for the role, but the film’s insurance company refused to allow him to be cast. Rotten apparently would have turned down the role anyway, saying he didn’t want to “live out any of Pete Townshend’s fantasies.” -The Criterion Collection

John Bindon, who plays Harry, the gangster, was just as colorful as his character. Before he was cast in Quadrophenia, Bindon did security for the 1977 Led Zeppelin U.S. tour, and he was tried for murder in 1978. He allegedly had many links to the London underworld and was even mixed up in a scandal involving Princess Margaret. -The Criterion Collection

During the initial shooting of the riot scenes in Brighton, some of the professional extras (the only paid ones in the film) cast to portray policemen were seen laughing as the cameras rolled. Roddam was not pleased, and before the reshoot, he instructed some of the mod extras to really attack the “police.” -The Criterion Collection