This is, of course, a re-watch, so I won't go into as much detail on the events but give more of a commentary. The first thing that's obvious, given our recent viewing, is how blatantly Alec Guinness (Professor Marcus) is "doing" an Alastair Sim performance. And it's a (deliciously) cartoonish one, too - Sim wouldn't have needed the props (ghoulish false teeth) that Guinness uses.
As Jami said, the one area where it's not obvious that Sim would have at least been his equal is when he turns crazy (because Herbert Lom calls him that), but in a parallel universe this is another beloved Sim character. Professor Marcus's introduction is also delightfully ghoulish, as you just see his silhouette out through various windows as Mrs. Wilberforce potters around inside her lopsided house-at-the-end-of-the-street. And in general, this is not a film you would necessarily want your young child to watch, not just because of the casual attitude towards death (and corpse disposal) but because there are genuinely sinister moments. The director, Alexander Mackendrick, would go on to direct the definite non-comedy Sweet Smell of Success where he would make Burt Lancaster similarly sinister.
Another thing I notice on a re-watch is that Frankie Howerd was basically fully-formed as a character in 1955. He's the owner of a fruit cart whose business Mrs. Wilberforce manages to destroy (as Peter Sellers' Harry notes bitterly later in the film when the boys are trying to justify bumping her off). He is driven to such distraction that by the end he is ripping off the headlights of the taxi Mrs. Wilberforce showed up in (which is holding the trunk with all the stolen money in it, so the boys are watching this aghast from another car down the street), which is driven by his fellow Carry On stalwart Kenneth Connor. Neither of them look particularly young, either.
One wonders where they filmed this. If it was a set then it's very impressive, otherwise I absolutely adore Mrs. Wilberforce's house-at-the-end-of-the-street, even if it's lopsided "from the bombing". And her daily walk up the street, which is teeming with local characters, and up and down which horses are still clip clopping is from another age. (There is one moment that suggests fakery: in one of my favorite moments in the film, when Mrs Wilberforce (who is not as oblivious as she appears) has twigged that the boys are bank robbers,
but they have convinced her that she'll go down with them as an accessory, has to answer the door to a policeman, who has actually just come to check up on her after the excitement of the fruit-barrow incident. She is given all kinds of talking points by the boys, such as "you can't come in without a warrant" and "buzz off!" which she dutifully repeats, but there's one moment when the policeman is silhouetted against the backdrop of the street and it looks incredibly green-screened. However, the scenes of the boys clambering around on the roof (where The Major meets his end) are obviously actually happening on SOMEthing, which leads me to think that maybe the house is a set.
The other main takeaway from the film is that, for all the presence of Guinness, Lom, Peter Sellers, et al., the film belongs to Mrs. Wilberforce and the marvelous Katie Johnson, whose performance had to be pitch perfect for the film to succeed.
She is so natural that you never once question that this is a real little old lady, who is a little bit dreamy and forgetful and an innocent relic of a bygone age. Her constant wittering is just done perfectly and she never once winks at the camera, as that would bring the whole edifice crashing down. Perhaps my favorite scene of the whole film is when she goes ahead with her party of little-old-ladies despite the fact that she has just worked out that the boys are ruthless criminals and sternly insists that they take part, thrusting a cup of tea and a slice of cake into Sellers's hands as he returns from some errand, mystified as to what has become of his gang. Where they found such an array of tiny, frail, bird-like little old lady actresses I have no idea.
Final summary [SPOILERS]: Louis kills the Major because he's trying to escape with "the lolly" after pretending to kill Mrs. Wilberforce. "One Round" kills Harry (with a plank of wood) because thinks he has killed Mrs. Wilberforce (of course he hasn't - as Professor Marcus says at the end, nothing can kill Mrs. Wilberforce, she'll be with us forever), Louis kills One Round because he left the safety catch on, Professor Marcus kills Louis (by prizing his ladder off the wall) and Louis shoots Professor Marcus, who is then clonked on the head by the railway signal. And of course, when Mrs' Wilberforce goes to the police to confess, she has to admit that all of the gang have disappeared (like the flying saucer she'd reported a few days ago). So she gets to keep the lolly. And buy a new brolly.
No comments:
Post a Comment