The Belles of St. Trinian’s (1954) - film review

The Sultan of Makyad has decided that his daughter Fatima should be brought up as a respectable English lady and so sends her to St Trinian’s, a boarding school for girls in Barchester.  What the Sultan does not know is that St Trinian’s is the scourge of the county, its wild brood of skirted monsters instilling fear amongst local shop owners whilst driving the Minister of Education into the arms of the men in white coats.   St Trinian’s is run by Millicent Fritton, an ageing spinster who is proud that no girl leaves her school without having acquired the requisite skills for survival in the modern age.  But the school faces an uncertain future.  Miss Fritton has had to mortgage the old family home to raise money so that she can stay in business.  Her brother Clarence, a shady bookmaker, threatens to apprise their mother of this fact unless Miss Fritton agrees to allow his daughter to resume his studies, having been expelled for setting fire to the school pavilion.

Meanwhile, the Barchester police are busy investigating a serious crime wave in the area.  Believing that St Trinian’s is the nexus of this criminal activity, Superintendent Sam Kemp-Bird sends his girlfriend, Ruby Gates, into the school to gather information.   Posing as a schoolmistress, Ruby is appalled by what she finds in the school: moral laxity and an approach to teaching that is indistinguishable from outright anarchy.  Chemistry lessons are devoted to the distillation of gin, which is collected and sold on by Flash Harry, the girls’ bookmaker.

When she learns that the Sultan of Makyad is to run a horse at odds of ten to one, Miss Fritton sees an opportunity to pay off her four thousand pound debt.  But unbeknown to her, her brother intends to remove the horse from the race because he has backed another rider.  The entire fourth form have also placed bets on the Sultan’s horse and have no intention of being cheated out of a fortune by the sixth form, who are in cahoots with Clarence Fritton.  As St Trinian’s erupts into civil war, Miss Fritton lends her support to the fourth formers in a last ditch attempt to save her school from bankruptcy.  This is perhaps not the best time for the school to receive an impromptu visit from the Minister of Education and a party of parents...

Inspired by Ronald Searle’s popular cartoons, The Belles of St. Trinian’s was one of the most successful films to come out of the partnership of Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat.  It was the first in a series of five St. Trinian’s films that poked fun at the English public school system and reflected both the austerity of the time and the marked societal changes that came about in the aftermath of WWII.  Although the later entries in the series are not well-regarded, the first three films stand up remarkably well and occupy an important place in British cinema, comedy classics in the truest sense of the term.

Easily the best in the series, The Belles of St. Trinian’s benefits from a sublime ensemble cast that is headed by some of the finest comedic actors of the period.  Alastair Sim practically steals the show with the dual role of the unorthodox headmistress Miss Fritton and her devious bookmaker brother Clarence, delineating the two characters so well that you could almost swear that Sim was starring alongside his twin sister.  Other delights include Joyce Grenfell’s quivering policewoman Ruby Gates (who exhibits only slightly less backbone than a filleted jelly fish) and George Cole as Flash Harry, an obvious prototype for Cole’s later (and best-known) creation Arthur Daley.

And that is not the end of the star power that propels this comedy juggernaut.  The supporting cast almost reads like a Who’s Who of British comedy, including such luminaries as Sid James, Richard Wattis, Beryl Reid, Joan Sims, Irene Handl, Hermione Baddeley and a veritable swarm of newcomers who would become household names in the following decades - Shirley Eaton, Barbara Windor, Roger Delgado, Arthur Mullard, etc.   Even Ronald Searle, the man who was ultimately responsible for this chaotic romp, appears fleetingly, as a visiting parent (which is appropriate, given that this was his brain child).

With its boisterous pace, deliriously funny character performances and anarchic sense of fun, The Belles of St. Trinian’s is a riot of belly laughs from start to finish, a film that assuredly deserves its reputation as an all-time comedy classic.  Whether the same can be said of its raunchier 2007 update, St. Trinian’s, remains to be seen, although it’s hard to see how this could hope to compete with a film that offers the combined talents of Sim, Grenfell and Cole, three of Britain’s greatest comedy icons.

© filmsdefrance.com 2010

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