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Make Mine Mink (1960)
Robert Asher | Comedy |
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 Synopsis
Dame Beatrice Appleby is at a loss when she has to give up her charity
work. Just what will she do with her time now? Her maid,
Lily, tries to cheer her up by giving her a valuable mink coat which
she fished from the balcony of a neighbouring couple, the
Spanagers. Dame Beatrice is grateful for the the gesture but
insists that the coat be returned to its rightful owner. The
problem is that Lily has only recently completed a stretch in prison
for burglary and if she returns the coat she risks ending up back in
jail. Fortunately, Dame Beatrice and her three lodgers – retired
army man Albert Rayne, bullying etiquette teacher Nanette Parry and
timid china mender Elizabeth Pinkerton – have the solution. They
will create a diversion to lure the Spanagers out of their flat so that
Major Rayne can return the fur coat unseen. Dame Beatrice and her
lodgers are surprised, and exhilarated, that the scheme works. In
fact, they are so exhilarated that they decide to form a gang
specialising in the theft of fur coats...
 More British Comedy |
Film Review
British film comedy was probably at its height in the late 1950s, early
’60s, owing to an abundance of talent on both sides of the
camera. Make Mine Mink
is typical of the ebullient comedy of this era, with larger than life
performances and a script that is so drenched in gags it is often
impossible to know where one joke stops and the next begins. Few
films celebrate the eccentricity of the British and their flair for
innocent knockabout humour more vigorously than this tirelessly funny
comedy classic. With a cast that includes comedy giants of the calibre of Terry-Thomas, Athene Seyler and Hattie Jacques, it is hard to see how the film could be anything other than an uproarious, laugh-a-second romp. Terry-Thomas discards his familiar cad persona here and instead plays a likeable retired army officer, whose well-planned operations, arranged with military precision, invariably end up going awry, thanks mainly to the ineptitude of a mousie spinster played by Elspeth Duxbury. Terry-Thomas has plenty of opportunity to deliver his famous catchphrase "What a shower" but, alas, deigns to do so in this film. (He would probably have sounded like a gramophone with a stuck needle.) Athene Seyler is a delight as the dowager Dame Beatrice, who sees nothing wrong in stealing fur coats to raise money for worthwhile causes, and Hattie Jacques is hilarious as the etiquette teacher with extreme Stalinist tendencies. And that’s not to overlook the enjoyable contributions from Billie Whitelaw, Irene Handl (equipped with the dodgiest Russian accent outside a James Bond film) and Kenneth Williams (who was about to become a household name through his regular appearances in the Carry On films). Make Mine Mink is glorious farce from the golden age of British film comedy. Based on Peter Coke’s popular stage play Breath of Spring, it parodies the caper movies of the era and is perhaps most memorable for its outrageous spoof homage to Carol Reed’s The Third Man (1949), complete with the famous zither theme. Some film comedies of this era have dated badly but, no doubt owing to the pedigree of its cast, this one remains as fresh and sidesplittingly funny as it was when it was first released. This is as good as it gets in the British comedy department, a class one chortle buster. © filmsdefrance.com 2009 Write a review for this film...User Comments
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