I was a student at Oxford when the film was made and, like a good many others, worked on it as an extra. The 'Carnaby Street' comment above is apt: most of us rather dressed up for the occasion- I wore a blue chiffon scarf I wouldn't have been seen dead in usually. The 'dons' were actually recruited from the Oxford dole queue but the students are real enough, and the college servant in the 'sconce' scene was the legendary Bill Pill, a real college servant from, I think, Balliol.
As usual, those familiar with Oxford will be surprised by the routes people seem to take. Valerio, for instance, is seen driving up the High Street towards Carfax, in the next shot going the other way past Magdalen College, apparently en route to the Trout Inn, which was on a completely different road out of the city.
The image of Oxford as a place of Upper Class Bullies and harassed working class youths, derived I suppose from the collected works of Evelyn Waugh, was already out of date when the film was made. (It was actually shot in the summer of 1969, definitely not on or before May morning.) I was myself a grammar school boy on a scholarship and never experienced anything of the sort.
As usual, those familiar with Oxford will be surprised by the routes people seem to take. Valerio, for instance, is seen driving up the High Street towards Carfax, in the next shot going the other way past Magdalen College, apparently en route to the Trout Inn, which was on a completely different road out of the city.
The image of Oxford as a place of Upper Class Bullies and harassed working class youths, derived I suppose from the collected works of Evelyn Waugh, was already out of date when the film was made. (It was actually shot in the summer of 1969, definitely not on or before May morning.) I was myself a grammar school boy on a scholarship and never experienced anything of the sort.