The Belles of St. Trinian's

source: The Belles of St. Trinian's

A really funny British comedy from the mid 1950's about a school for girls. The girls are all involved in mischief and mayhem, making bathtub gin, smoking and gambling. Alastair Sim plays Headmistress Millicent in a glorious drag role, as well as playing Millicent's brother. A female police officer goes to the school undercover to see what is going on. This film is funny, having great sight gags and Alastair Sim is great. Just a classic Britsh comedy, lots of fun and not too cruse. Joan Sims ans Sid James, stars of many Carry On films, play small roles, but this film is about the girls. It spawned 3 sequels and a recent re-make. Watch and enjoy where it all began.

The Belles of St. Trinian's is directed by Frank Launder and co-written by Launder, Sidney Gilliat and Val Valentine. It stars Alastair Sim, Joyce Grenfell, George Cole, Hermione Baddeley and Betty Ann Davis. Music is by Malcolm Arnold and cinematography by Stanley Pavey. Inspired by the cartoon drawings of Ronald Searle, The Belles of St. Trinian's is the first part of a franchise that still thrives even today. With 7 films currently under the Trinian's banner, the roguish behaviour of the girls and their manner of dress sense passed into pop culture and is still going strong today. Either for sexual titillation (the St. Trinian's look has always been popular at fancy dress parties) or as a tag for unruly girls in British schools, it's hard to believe that Searle envisaged the ever lasting appeal of his creations. Unfortunately the films are a mixed bunch, with a couple of them just plain bad. This however is not a problem with The Belles, the best of the bunch by some margin. The Barchester Bedlam. Pic is fronted by Sim in a dual role of brother and sister. The art of drag has been tarnished over the years by some of the more stuffy members of the human race, but in the right hands it often works so well, as evidence by the wonderful Sim here. The plot involves a gambling sting at the big horserace on the horizon, with Flash Harry (Cole) aided and abetted by the terrors of St. Trinian's. It's all very chaotic and horsey, both in the equine sense and in horseplay terms. Grenfell is the policewoman who goes under cover as a teacher in the school, where the staff roster is populated by British stars of the future like Beryl Reid, Joan Sims and Irene Handl. The girls, of various stages of their schooling, smoke, toke, drink and take every opportunity to cause mischief. Their reputation precedes them, as the train that carries them inward bound for the new term approaches, the town citizens start to board the place up, even the chickens run off into hibernation! This is the on going joke that works right to the film's conclusion, sadly it would run out of steam by the time The Great St. Trinian's Train Robbery pulled into the station in 1966. But Belles is great fun, very British of course and very clever. From Sim being dry as the Sahara and Grenfell's Duracell Bunny performance, to those rascal girls, the school is open for frolics and energised bedlam. Enjoy. 8/10

As the new term is about to begin everybody near St Trinian's School for Young Ladies prepares for the worst; even the local police sergeant locks himself in his own cell! St Trinian's reputation for crime and hooliganism is well deserved; in chemistry they make explosives and gin, in geography they learn where all the best wines are made and when they play hockey a large supply of stretchers are required! This term sees the arrival of a Fatima, an Arab princess, amongst the girls and the return of the headmistress's previously expelled niece who hopes to learn about Fatima's gather's prize racehorse, Arab Boy, which her father has bet against. When Headmistress Millicent Fritton learns that the girls are planning to place a bet on Arab Boy with the local spiv she is horrified... then bets all of the school funds on it! As the day of the race approaches two groups of girls each struggle to make sure a different horse wins the race; and if the wrong one wins the school will have to close. If that wasn't enough trouble an undercover policewoman has come to the school as the new gym teacher and a school inspector is going to pay a visit on parents' day. This, the first of the St Trinian's film, may be almost sixty years old but it has lost none of its anarchic charm. Alastair Sim does a fine job playing both Miss Fritton and her bookie brother Clarence; sometimes in the same scene, Joyce Grenfell is good as the undercover Sgt, Gates and George Cole is fun as spiv Flash Harry... the real stars though are the numerous girls whose behaviour makes them amongst the most feared people in the country! They are portrayed as genuinely anarchic without being unlikably malicious. The plot is of course fairly silly but it works well enough for a comedy. If you enjoy classic British comedies then this one is a must see.

Alastair Sim in a double role lights up this production that otherwise I did not find too much fun to watch. There are a few amusing moments during the film, but I generally found it to be rather overdone and too absurd to be funny. Many of these old British comedies still have charm and the power to make me laugh, but I would not place this film in that category. The characters actually felt rather stale, and I found it all rather annoying. I do realise that I'm in the minority here, so maybe it's just me. I suppose if one is into zaniness this might be good to watch, and Alastair Sim fans should see it for him playing two roles rather well, but otherwise I just personally cannot recommended it.

Choose your fate: The terrible tykes of the fourth form, playing practical jokes that involve axes, or the...ummm...well-developed girls of the sixth form, who discovered some time ago cigarettes, gin, sex and how easily men can be led astray. The problem is that one set comes with the other. They are all there at St. Trinian's, that remarkably easy-going English school for girls led by headmistress Millicent Fritton (Alastair Sim). As Miss Fritton is fond of pointing out, "In other schools girls are sent out quite unprepared into a merciless world, but when our girls leave here, it is the merciless world which has to be prepared." Miss Fritton sounds something like a melding of Julia Child and Eleanor Roosevelt, and definitely has Sim's droll and deadpan comic genes. In The Belles of St. Trinian's, a sly, chaotic comedy from the team of Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat, St. Trinian's is, as usual, on the brink of financial disaster. Salvation may be at hand, however, when a rich sheik sends his daughter to join the fourth form and receive a proper English education. The sheik also is a horse owner and one of his prize racers, Arab Boy, is being trained near the school for a race. It's only a matter of time before the fourth- form girls form a racing pool and bet heavily on Arab Boy, with Miss Fritton adding to the pool what funds the school has left. (Much of the fourth-form girl's money comes from the gin they make in chemistry, then bottle and lower by rope to Flash Harry (George Cole), a Cockney fixer, for distribution. "It's got something...I don't know quite what," says Miss Fritton on sampling the stuff, "but send a few bottles up to my room.") Miss Fritton, however, has a brother, Clarence Fritton (who, by some coincidence of casting, also is Alastair Sim), a bookmaker who not only has placed a bundle on another horse, but who also has a daughter. And he has placed the precocious Arabella in the sixth form to keep him informed. Soon the sixth form has kidnapped Arab Boy, the fourth form has taken the horse back, Flash Harry has joined forces with Miss Fritton, the sixth-form girls are determined that Arab Boy will not leave the second floor of St. Trinian's, Clarence and his Homburg-wearing gang have arrived, parents are driving up for Parent's Day and the Ministry of Education has arrived in the person of a very proper inspector. Total war breaks out at St. Trinian's. It's hard to say which is more dangerous, the African spears or the flour bombs. Alastair Sim as Millicent Fritton turns in a tour de force performance. Miss Fritton is a tall woman with a stately bosom, fond of long gowns with embroidered lace and Edwardian hats with lots of feathers. She takes everything in stride, even a fourth-former pounding at something in chemistry class and, after hearing an explosion a few minutes later, the results. "Oh dear. I told Bessie to be careful with that nitro-glycerine!" She is firm in believing that St. Trinian's is "a gay arcadia of happy girls." Sim was one of Britain's great eccentric actors. Other than the sheer chaos of all the little (and not so little) girls doing terrible things, he delivers much of the film's pleasure.

I've recently re-found my love of British comedy, so I've been checking out all the old classics on TV as of late. As I'd never seen a St Trinian's film before, I thought I'd better start right at the beginning with this one. First off, and let's be fair, this is a film that has dated somewhat. The laughs, seen today, are overly familiar and may provoke an odd chuckle or two, but there are certainly no belly laughs. The storyline seems to be all over the place at times, or it may just be that I prefer the lighter, more sketch-like appeal of the early CARRY ONs. What this is, in essence, is the getting-together of various bizarre characters and watching them create chaos. Alistair Sim is certainly memorable as the headmistress, Miss Fritton, but it's George Cole who steals all his scenes as the wheeler-dealer Flash Harry. Add in a cast of famous faces (including Joan Sims channelling Diana Dors) and you have a typically old-fashioned British comedy. A lot of the material with the unruly schoolgirls is funny and very much a product of its time, but I found that the sequels just got better and better.

Not a fantastic film, but certainly not bad. The film stars Alastair Sim, who was and always will be one of the greatest actors. Sim makes the film work, but without him, I didn't think the picture would be as good. The acting is tremendous, as is the direction, but I was a little bored by the subject, the story just didn't do it for me. Overall, a good film, but story a little tedious.

Before I get to reviewing this film's merits, I should point out that this DVD needs captions--as it has none. While the English accents are not as thick as in some films, for us non-Brits it sure would help to have DVD captions or closed captioning--particularly if you are hard of hearing like I am. The film is set at a god-awful girls school, St. Trinian's. The teachers are unqualified and indifferent--mostly because the kids are so incorrigible and unruly. It all seems to be this way because the Headmistress is a complete idiot. Interestingly, this lady is played by Alastair Sim--who also plays the part of her brother, a professional gambler. When the kids blow things up, kidnap or run amok, she seems to think it's a case of 'girls being girls'. All she really seems to care about it keeping her debt-ridden school afloat--by whatever means is necessary. Watching this film was a lot like watching a hundred kids like the one from "Problem Child" as they go about their wicked ways. At first it was rather cute, but after a while I felt a bit numb about it. Fortunately, there is a bit of plot later in the film about gamblers and a kidnapped horse. While it's all mildly funny, I also was left inexplicably flat about it--and I am not sure why. I mean, seeing and hearing Sim playing a lady was great and the idea of a school full of horrid kids is cute...but the film didn't seem to have a lot more to offer--no deeper meaning or significance. It's decent but don't expect an Ealing comedy...though Sim is quite good.

The gag is simple. Start with a private, exclusive girl's school, something the Brits inexplicably call a "public" school. Then transform it into something criminally mischievous. At once you get the two mainstays of British humor: reversals in class and sexual tweaks. Since nearly all movies of this type are gag movies, the story is disposable, only allowing the situation to be displayed. Its a bit delicate though. In this first of the series, the class token is chosen as someone safe, an oil sheik. And the sex bit is far, far more subdued than in later episodes. The only one I have seen, "Blue Murder," the next, suggests the older girls are running a brothel. There, you have solid knicker jokes. Here you only have a soccer game inserted so you can see their figures. Since these girls are depicted as undefeatable, the situation ends up pitting the fourth grade against the sixth, since they back different horses in a race. One wonders whether this was done the Ealing way, by consulting a chart of comic situations, or the ordinary way by intuitive brainstorming. Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.