1957 - Dir.: Mario Zampi
Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 27th September, 2008
This is British Comedy from the tail end of the age of whimsy. Things were about to get more gritty and realistic... and then Barbara Windsor’s exploding bra and the truly awful “Confessions of...” series would condemn our local film industry to decades of tawdriness. Here though, the established stars of a more innocent age do their turns and make us smile. There are a couple of digs at the political establishment but, as in the Ealing comedies, Mr Zampi is content merely to prick the bubble of pomposity. The earthy delights of Steptoe & Son were five years away and Alf Garnett hadn’t been invented yet - so relax and wallow in a bygone age where the most racy thing about the film was its title.
Watch out for the young pre-Carry On Joan Sims giving a critically acclaimed performance as “a walking, twitching, comedy of hysteria”.
For an Italian, Mario Zampi had an amazing grasp of the British sense of humour. In the 1950s he made five tremendously enjoyable romps that had something of the Ealing flavour. He died in 1963 after completing the sophisticated Jimmy Edwards picture “Bottoms Up”
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