Crash! (1971) Timeline Explained – Every Event in Order

Release, runtime and language

1971 · 17 mins · English

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Directed by

Harley Cokeliss

Starring

J.G. Ballard, Gabrielle Drake

A BBC short film adapts J.G. Ballard’s novel Crash, reflecting the author’s experimental, darkest period after his wife’s 1964 death. It moves from Freudian inner‑psyche analysis to a fascination with external reality, eroticising car collisions. The film alludes to Ballard’s cut‑up texts, collage‑style ads, concrete poems, an aborted multimedia play, and a gallery of crashed cars with strippers and a chaotic audience.