If you're going to do an Alastair Sim binge, you can't really not watch a St. Trinian's film, but they aren't streaming anywhere, so I ordered the set to give Jami for her birthday. And this is the first, where Sim plays the dual role of Millicent Fritton, headmistress of St. Trinian's, and her ne'er-do-well brother Clarence. He doesn't have much to do as the latter, so it is as the former that he dominates this film. He cannot help but be outsize in his performance (that face!)
but he invest Millicent with an inner dignity that is rather endearing. She is not a cartoon - not a Terry Jones-style performance. However, the film itself is of dubious quality. Perhaps because we'd just watched an Alexander Mackendrick film, this one seemed distinctly workmanlike. It's not that there weren't excellent performances - besides Millicent there's George Cole (of course)
as young spiv Flash Harry (was that where the name originated?) and Joyce Grenfell
(who does rather go over the edge into cartoon character, but then you know what you're getting with Joyce Grenfell), Beryl Reid,
and even Sid James in an early (although you wouldn't know it - did he come into the world looking like that?) small role (oh, and Joan Sims too
- the Carry On films were in embryonic form in the British film industry of the 50s). Oh, and this guy, last seen as the doctor in The Green Man.
Of course, it's hard to avoid being cartoonish when you're a live action adaptation of literal cartoons. And it would be hard to capture the sheer seedy, macabre violence of the Ronald Searle originals, although the younger actors are very good.
The plot is pretty much beside the point: an Arab Sheik (regrettable use of brownface on him and the girl playing his daughter Fatima) is happy to install his daughter in an English boarding school (clearly unaware, unlike the townspeople, local constabulary and indeed Ministry of Education, of its fearsome reputation) because his kingdom, as we see in a prologue, is being overrun by lusty American servicemen (not to mention nubile American reporters working on stories about life in a harem), particularly one that is so convenient for where his has his prize racehorse "Arab Boy" stabled. Well, St. Trinian's is teetering on the edge of foreclosure before Millicent is convinced to put down the £400 she has at 10-1 on Arab Boy. But Clarence needs his horse to win, so gets his daughter,
whom he has re-installed (she was expelled for burning down an un-insured building) at St. Trinian's to get info about Arab Boy to attempt to nobble the horse. Meanwhile the younger girls are also betting on Arab Boy so rival groups of schoolgirls compete to get the horse. He ends up staying overnight in one of their dorms,
and then barricaded in by the daughter and her pals, and Clarence shows up with his posse of undesirables (including Sid James) as reinforcements, coincidentally on Parents' Day at the school. Will Arab Boy make it to the Gold Cup and save the school?
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