For a while, I made my living manning a video camera at various events. I enjoyed the work for the most part but was always bemused at how many attendees succumbed to the urge to act superior and belittle others. While there’s no shortage of people in high social circles who are complete asshats, a general characteristic of that crowd is a reluctance to flex that superiority. Their power is in not having to use that, which makes a person suspect when they draw attention to themselves by being haughty and demanding.
Such is the case with the officials of the British seaside town of Portsmouth in 1963’s The Punch and Judy Man. In celebration of the 60th anniversary of the town’s founding, they are holding a celebration for the community which culminates in a gala to which very few are invited. Even inside the event, there is a further roped-off area where the dignitaries are entertaining guest Lady Jane Caterham (Barbara Murray). Eventually, those class distinctions will be set aside as the event descends into chaos, culminating in a food fight. The dignitaries end up looking quite undignified.
They were setting themselves up for a fall well before the event, treating with disdain those who run the tacky attractions which fill the town’s coffers. Mayor Ronald Fraser seems to especially have it out for Tony Hancock, who runs the Punch and Judy puppet show with Hugh Lloyd. When we first see Fraser, the two men are driving by on their way to work when Hancock flips the mayor the backwards-V which is the Brit equivalent of the American middle finger. He then effortlessly makes this appear to be merely how he will grab his hat so as to obsequiously remove it.
Hancock has warmer greeting for his fellow hucksters, the various palm readers, ride operators and the like. He is especially chummy with John Le Mesurier, whose odd attraction is some figures sculpted from sand and then painted. Initially, Hancock and Lloyd are at odds with photographer Mario Fabrizi, but the beginnings of a comradery form when rain brings them all together in the pub.
The bar is also where the class distinctions will surface, with the town governance collected in a private room in the back, and the bartender far more interested in currying their favor than in serving the riff-raff in the front. There is a great comic sequence where Hancock torments the officials by opening various windows in the divider and the men try desperately to keep each of those closed. Perhaps the barman’s best revenge is the product he dispenses, as Hancock comments, “If he must water the beer, I wish he wouldn’t use seawater.”
Meanwhile, back at home, his wife (Sylvia Syms) dreams of crossing the class divide. As a regular reader of the society pages, she is overjoyed to learn Murray will be attending the gala, and so seizes the opportunity to attend when the mayor’s wife (Pauline Jameson) more or less demands Hancock put on his puppet show at the event. That Jameson prefers to be addressed as the “mayoress” is yet more of the pompousness on display.
About that Punch and Judy show: even to this complete Anglophile, there is little more baffling, yet essentially British, than that rich tradition of domestic abuse and murder celebrated through the art of puppetry. To be fair, Hancock seems to be aware of the inherent creepiness of the thing, criticizing television for being too violent, while the Punch puppet he’s working is pummeling a baby.
And something feels apt about this particular show being staged at yet another British institution which baffles Yanks like myself, and that is the sad and tacky seaside resort town. While the allure of my own country’s equally distasteful beachside burgs continues to elude me, films like this always have me wondering why anybody on the isle would want to spend their free time in one of these places.
The location does, however, recall for me Jacques Tati’s M. Hulot’s Holiday, and these two films share an odd kind of melancholy one wouldn’t expect from comedies set in seaside resort towns. One tangent in this I found especially moving is when Hancock walks to the bus stop in the rain Nicholas Webb, a young boy who is obsessed with the puppet show. I was a bit angry with myself at what a softie I’m becoming in my advanced age, that this simple act of kindness moved me as much as it did. Still, even this has a comic moment, as this detour takes a further detour into an ice cream parlor, where an odd eating competition ensues which is never as funny as it seems to think it is.
But there are a great many other moments in the film which are laugh-out-loud hilarious. On that commute into work, Lloyd finds his car is momentarily outpaced by a little girl on a bicycle, leading him to comment, “We really must get this tuned-up you know.”
The best gag is near the end, when Hancock accidentally causes a short-circuit which dims some of the bulbs in various electrical signs which have been constructed especially for the town anniversary. The town motto of “PILTDOWN EVER FORWARD NEVER BACKWARD” becomes “PILTDOWN EVER BACKWARD”. One might think tourism would see a boost when “60 GOLDEN YEARS OF PILTDOWN” transitions to “DEN OF SIN”. Likely more accurate is when “60 GOLDEN YEARS OF PILTDOWN” becomes “60 YEARS OF DOOM”. My favorite, and the most confusing, is “PILTDOWN 60 YEARS” mutating into “I OWN 6 EARS”.
The Punch and Judy Man is less a comedy than a kitchen-sink drama with occasional burst of humor. Still, I liked both of these seemingly incongruous aspects of it. Something is awfully fitting about it being in black and white, and there is a feeling of a rainy day even before the outburst sends our characters into pubs and an arcade full of electromechanical games. It is sweet, but not as sickly so as the massive sundae Hancock succeeds in downing in that ice cream parlor. It is a mildly acerbic class satire, but a bit like Lloyd’s crocodile puppet, which can bite but not very hard.
Dir: Jeremy Summers
Starring Tony Hancock, Sylvia Syms, Ronald Fraser, Barbara Murray
Watched on Studiocanal UK blu-ray (region B)