I have long wanted to be cremated once my number is up. My morbid sense of humor has me wishing I could mandate my remains be mixed into fruit punch to be served to oblivious attendees of my funeral. Figured there would be something in the service about there will always be a little bit of me in each of them, especially those who drank the punch. My lawyer advised against it.
It seems like the kind of thing Hugh Griffith would have done in 1951’s Laughter in Paradise. We barely see the wealthy, old prankster before he literally dies laughing. Instead, his will mandates each of his surviving relatives complete a certain tasks unique to them within a month. Since some of these are illegal, I wonder why nobody challenges the will. Never mind the stipulation in it that a challenge posed by any one of them will forfeit the opportunity for any of them to collect.
Consider what Alastair Sim has to do, which is commit a crime and served a sentence for it that is not less than 28 days. George Cole doesn’t fare any better, as he has the pull a gun on the manager of the bank where he works. Guy Middleton has to marry the first woman he speaks to after the reading of the will. Fay Compton only has to find employment as domestic help and remain in that capacity for a month. Also, typical of plots such as this, the terms of the will cannot be revealed to anybody.
The last of those is, if not least challenging, the most legal of the challenges. Still, karmic payback is a bitch, and the harsh manner with which she treated her own help means she will work for the deeply unpleasant John Laurie. When she first arrives, there is a loud banging on the floor to summon assistance, and I thought she had wandered into The Haunting. Laurie’s daughter, played by Veronica Hurst, is desperate to find somebody who won’t quit, yet he tries to fire Compton in her first night. Desperate to not forfeit her share of the inheritance, he offers to work for free. When he doesn’t take that bait, she offers him a thousand pounds to let her work for the month. With how the economy is going as I write this, I wonder if people in real-life will start paying to work for companies.
Cole is having trouble with his task as well. He is very meek and put-upon. That he is intimidated by boss Ronald Adam will make his task all the more difficult. There isn’t much more to say about his storyline that won’t ruin the surprise of how it turns out.
Middleton is a scoundrel who cheats whenever he can, and so will continue to do so to fulfill his obligation. Myself, I think he would have been wise to have proposed marriage to the first woman he speaks to, as it is Audrey Hepburn, as a cigarette girl in what was only her second film appearance. Instead, Middleton takes care Sim hasn’t seen this, and so later passes what he thinks is a chance meeting of offering roadside assistance to Beatrice Campbell as the first time he has spoken to a person of the fairer sex since the reading. It is no surprise that this isn’t a chance encounter and that he is starting down a path of being taken for a ride when he offers to take her for one.
By far, the most interesting storyline is Sim’s. His character is the most richly developed, and even before he receives news of Griffith’s demise. He is secretly the author of a great many pulp novels, all of which he dictates to Eleanor Summerfield. Her enthusiasm for the man and his writing makes her awfully adorable, even if the words she choose to express her ardor are not always as intended: “Most people cannot even get a book published. But look at yours! Scores of them! Under 15 different names!”
Sim is trying to hide his creative endeavor from fiancée Joyce Grenfell, in yet another wonderfully daffy and quirky performance of this legendary comedic actor. That Sim has postponed their nuptials so as to be engaged for ten years doesn’t bode well. I wasn’t sure of her career, though it is in the military. She has the no-nonsense bearing of an officer, and Sim is correct in assuming she and magistrate father A.E. Matthews will not approve of his career. For his cover story for being incarcerated for a month, he lets Grenfell assume he is going undercover. I like this exchange between her and Sim: “You’re not going behind the Iron Curtain” “Well, you could say that…”
I like how Sim does research for the right crime for the sentence he requires, going to the police station under the ruse he needs the info for one of his novels. He claims he needs the hero of this work to commit “a very respectable crime—nothing nasty. He still has to get the heroine” I was confused at first and thought he was under the incorrect assumption we will get only 28 days for heroin.
The best part of the movie is Sim trying to get arrested. One scene as his trying and failing to shoplift a string of pearls, losing not only those to pickpockets in the store, but his wallet as well.
There is an infectious joy throughout Laughter in Paradise. It is no surprise how things will turn out in the end; however, I will not say anything else which may deprive viewers of the enjoyment of that. There is a bit of heart as well, with such lines as “it’s a gruesome discovery to find there’s not a soul in the world who wants to dine with you.” As for the overall premise, I have always hated practical jokes as they are never practical. But the characters here will discover Griffith was a practitioner who was trying to make a point or two: “I have always been a practical joker but my practical jokes have always had something of a practical nature to them.”
Dir: Mario Zampi
Starring Alastair Sim, Fay Compton, Guy Middleton, George Cole
Watched as part of Film Movement’s blu-ray box set Alastair Sim’s School for Laughter: 4 Classic Comedies