After MANY years of anxiously searching high and low, I finally managed to get a copy of the DVD of this unique piece of cinema. I rang a couple of my friends, both keen Milliganians, and lovers of British comedy in general to come and watch it.
Credits list the cast in order of height, as a "dig" at some of the people involved in financing the movie wanting to have tight artistic control (including height of the actors.) Rita Tushingham, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe, Jimmy Edwards, Ralph Richardson, Michael Hordern, Marty Feldman and Arthur Lowe are but a few of this constellation.
I saw this 1969 movie in 1972 or thereabouts in Sydney, 4 weekends running.
It's based on a play by Spike Milligan and John Antrobus, and I've been to several live performances in the interim, as well as having a copy of the stageplay, so I'm thoroughly familiar with it.
The film is directed by Richard Lester who has such films as "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and "Hard Day's Night" to his credit.
The opening is rather disorienting, showing a smoke-dimmed sun, flowing lava, stretches of deserted landscape and a close up of the burning face of a child's dolly.
Through the miracle of the BBC, ie a newsreader whose job is to travel to the various locations and read the last available news bulletin via an empty television set we start to uncover the story. His dress is strange, being utter rags except for a tuxedo jacket and bow-tie which ends at mid chest and upper arms. When he kneels behind the TV set, it makes (a little) sense. He appears as a BBC newsreader SHOULD appear.
The story? Britain has been destroyed in the world's shortest war ("nuclear misunderstanding") which lasted about 2 minutes and something seconds, including the signing of the peace treaty (blotted). We hear that the task of burying the 40 million dead is being undertaken (cut to a shot of Spike Milligan and a shovel, digging a hole, with a pile of false teeth beside it. He looks at a set of teeth, and surreptitiously slips it into his coat pocket.) The characters begin to flesh out. A family, Mum, Dad and Daughter Penelope, pregnant 17 months, live in the carriages of an automatic underground train, sustained by efforts of the breadwinner Father, who leaps out of the carriage at each stop with a tomahawk to smash vending machines to get something to eat ("The last bar of chocolate on the Circle line" he says grimly.) Unbeknownst to Mummy and Daddy, Penelope has a boyfriend in the next (smoking) carriage along, and when she pops out for a smoke, it's into the arms of her lover.
Capt Bules-Martin, a doctor, whose proudest possession is a piece of Hovis bread he has had mounted in an ornate ring, takes his office (a shopfront door and window on wheels) around to treat his patients. Lord Fortnum of Alamein is one such patient who eventually discloses that he fears he is turning into a bedsitting room. Bules-Martin ascribes this to atomic mutation. Fortnum asks "What can I take for it?", to which the medic replies "Three guineas rent, and try to keep out of overdrafts." I could analyse this black and anarchic, yet trenchantly funny, movie for hours, delivering gags, but in the end it would be pointless. Again, after nearly 40 years, I found myself being sucked into the upside-down, inside-outness of this story, accepting that it's perfectly okay to ride up on an escalator that ends in mid-air and be dumped down a hole in the ground.
The characters eventually meet at Lord Fortnum, who is now situated at 29 Cul-de-Sac Place, and a rather tacky looking bedsitter he is, sitting forlornly in what remains of Paddington, when he hoped to be in Belgravia, where the rents are higher. Here the darkness which has been shading the edge of the story comes into sharp focus, as the sirens wail and the warning about radioactive gas blowing in on the wind is heard. Until now, nobody (except the BBC) has dared mention the word "bomb", the cause of their predicament, but when one of them finally blurts out "the word" it drives them into hysterical panic, and they run and try to hide, pray to heaven or whoever will listen, as their situation is finally thrust on them.
I'll not spoil the story (if indeed there is one), but it is a very stinging satirical comment on many levels, from the absurd, where a person can become Prime Minister of England because he has an inside leg measurement of 22 inches, to a very modern 21st Century look at what can happen (as done by we humans) to the environment. Watching one of the characters thrashing around in thigh deep glutinous mud trying to get a drink brought to mind an article on a science program on ABC TV a couple of weeks ago which showed 2 people taking samples of the mud from the bed of the dying Murray-Darling rivers system, but having to wear protective gear such as gloves, goggles and rubber overalls, because the mud was nearly as acidic as battery acid, thanks to the plundering of the water by irrigating farmers further upstream.
A very good movie, and whilst I warned both my companions that it was very black, they laughed heartily throughout, but they both agreed that it was surreal but funny.
Special features on the DVD consists of 3 interviews (1967) with Richard Lester, Peter Cook and Spike Milligan. Milligan was a real eye-opener. At one stage he started discussing the possibility of the American dollar collapsing ... and how it could affect the British pound. In light of the global financial crisis, he was very close to the mark in his assessment.
Credits list the cast in order of height, as a "dig" at some of the people involved in financing the movie wanting to have tight artistic control (including height of the actors.) Rita Tushingham, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe, Jimmy Edwards, Ralph Richardson, Michael Hordern, Marty Feldman and Arthur Lowe are but a few of this constellation.
I saw this 1969 movie in 1972 or thereabouts in Sydney, 4 weekends running.
It's based on a play by Spike Milligan and John Antrobus, and I've been to several live performances in the interim, as well as having a copy of the stageplay, so I'm thoroughly familiar with it.
The film is directed by Richard Lester who has such films as "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and "Hard Day's Night" to his credit.
The opening is rather disorienting, showing a smoke-dimmed sun, flowing lava, stretches of deserted landscape and a close up of the burning face of a child's dolly.
Through the miracle of the BBC, ie a newsreader whose job is to travel to the various locations and read the last available news bulletin via an empty television set we start to uncover the story. His dress is strange, being utter rags except for a tuxedo jacket and bow-tie which ends at mid chest and upper arms. When he kneels behind the TV set, it makes (a little) sense. He appears as a BBC newsreader SHOULD appear.
The story? Britain has been destroyed in the world's shortest war ("nuclear misunderstanding") which lasted about 2 minutes and something seconds, including the signing of the peace treaty (blotted). We hear that the task of burying the 40 million dead is being undertaken (cut to a shot of Spike Milligan and a shovel, digging a hole, with a pile of false teeth beside it. He looks at a set of teeth, and surreptitiously slips it into his coat pocket.) The characters begin to flesh out. A family, Mum, Dad and Daughter Penelope, pregnant 17 months, live in the carriages of an automatic underground train, sustained by efforts of the breadwinner Father, who leaps out of the carriage at each stop with a tomahawk to smash vending machines to get something to eat ("The last bar of chocolate on the Circle line" he says grimly.) Unbeknownst to Mummy and Daddy, Penelope has a boyfriend in the next (smoking) carriage along, and when she pops out for a smoke, it's into the arms of her lover.
Capt Bules-Martin, a doctor, whose proudest possession is a piece of Hovis bread he has had mounted in an ornate ring, takes his office (a shopfront door and window on wheels) around to treat his patients. Lord Fortnum of Alamein is one such patient who eventually discloses that he fears he is turning into a bedsitting room. Bules-Martin ascribes this to atomic mutation. Fortnum asks "What can I take for it?", to which the medic replies "Three guineas rent, and try to keep out of overdrafts." I could analyse this black and anarchic, yet trenchantly funny, movie for hours, delivering gags, but in the end it would be pointless. Again, after nearly 40 years, I found myself being sucked into the upside-down, inside-outness of this story, accepting that it's perfectly okay to ride up on an escalator that ends in mid-air and be dumped down a hole in the ground.
The characters eventually meet at Lord Fortnum, who is now situated at 29 Cul-de-Sac Place, and a rather tacky looking bedsitter he is, sitting forlornly in what remains of Paddington, when he hoped to be in Belgravia, where the rents are higher. Here the darkness which has been shading the edge of the story comes into sharp focus, as the sirens wail and the warning about radioactive gas blowing in on the wind is heard. Until now, nobody (except the BBC) has dared mention the word "bomb", the cause of their predicament, but when one of them finally blurts out "the word" it drives them into hysterical panic, and they run and try to hide, pray to heaven or whoever will listen, as their situation is finally thrust on them.
I'll not spoil the story (if indeed there is one), but it is a very stinging satirical comment on many levels, from the absurd, where a person can become Prime Minister of England because he has an inside leg measurement of 22 inches, to a very modern 21st Century look at what can happen (as done by we humans) to the environment. Watching one of the characters thrashing around in thigh deep glutinous mud trying to get a drink brought to mind an article on a science program on ABC TV a couple of weeks ago which showed 2 people taking samples of the mud from the bed of the dying Murray-Darling rivers system, but having to wear protective gear such as gloves, goggles and rubber overalls, because the mud was nearly as acidic as battery acid, thanks to the plundering of the water by irrigating farmers further upstream.
A very good movie, and whilst I warned both my companions that it was very black, they laughed heartily throughout, but they both agreed that it was surreal but funny.
Special features on the DVD consists of 3 interviews (1967) with Richard Lester, Peter Cook and Spike Milligan. Milligan was a real eye-opener. At one stage he started discussing the possibility of the American dollar collapsing ... and how it could affect the British pound. In light of the global financial crisis, he was very close to the mark in his assessment.