Alastair Sim was a treasure. I have yet to see a movie which wasn’t improved upon by his presence. Naturally, some of those pictures are better than others. 1954’s The Belles of St. Trinian’s is a tour-de-force for the actor, with him in dual roles as the Millicent Fritton and her brother Clarence. To keep things simpler, I will refer to Sim by each of these character’s names.
Millicent runs a boarding school for young girls. Actually, the students have the run of the school, running roughshod over everything. When the bus arrives with this year’s bunch, the shopkeepers board up their windows, and an officer locks himself in his own cell. I was amused Millicent is not oblivious to the nature of her wards, though there are limits: “I cannot allow continual arson at my school. I must set an example.” She is also on her guard against various traps the girls have set out for her, at least one of which has the potential to kill her. Odd how the students nearly murder the person who is letting them get away with murder.
The staff are hardly any better than those they allegedly teach. I especially liked Jean Langston as a fugitive who bears more than a passing resemblance to Morticia Addams. In an interesting touch, the opening credits have a scroll of illustrations of mischievous students passing under the text. The drawings are by Ronald Searle, but the nature of them brought to my mind Charles Addams.
The staff are all desperate to be paid, and it will take a miracle for the school to not go under. Salvation will arrive in the form of Lorna Anderson, the daughter of Sultan Eric Pohlmann. In the short term, he has given her 100 pounds, which Millicent has the good sense to put in her safe—simply to protect the girl’s money, mind you. In the long term, the school may benefit from a horse of her father’s that looks to win an upcoming race where it has 10-to-1 odds. Clarence, on the other hand, favors a different animal in the same heat, and so tasks daughter Vivienne Martin and her friends to abduct the Sultan’s horse. All kinds of bizarre equine shenanigans ensue. At one point, it will be in a girl’s dorm with its head out the window, and I’m just glad its severed head never ended up in anybody’s bed.
I say that because this is a surprisingly violent film, even for one that is darkly humored from the first frame. When we first see the sign for the school, it is being perforated by machine gun fire. A pillow fight captured in a high-angle shot looks to be close to actual warfare. At one point, a girl who snitches on everybody is at risk of getting quartered by her peers. A field hockey match results in a long line of referees being knocked unconscious and carried out on a parade of stretchers.
I like how Millicent and her girls are always looking for the next con to work. The school’s trophies have all been pawned and are in that shop’s window. The field hockey goals are different sizes. Officer Joyce Grenfell has gone undercover as the physical education teacher and she asks what happens when they have to change sides at the half. She’s informed there never is a second half in a match against them. There’s even a double-sided coin they always use for the toss.
The place just seems to draw unsavory characters, such as a local hustler played by George Cole. He will be instrumental in placing the bet for Millicent that will either save or ruin the institution. Up until then, he had been lurking about the grounds, as he is the one selling the bottles of spirits produced from the still built and operated by the chemistry class. While his character provides moments of amusement, I couldn’t help but be weirded out by the sight of a man in a trench coat lurking around a girls’ school.
The cast in this, both young and old, are fantastic. Some familiar faces from other similar British films are in small roles, such as Richard Wattis as a Ministry of Education official who has received so many complaints about St. Trinian’s that he has an entire drawer of his filing cabinets just for the letter “T”. He once sent somebody to investigate the school, but they never returned. Then a second man was sent to look for the first, only to meet the same mysterious fate. Even stranger is the paychecks for both men continue to be cashed.
There are many interesting aspects to this very smart film. I like how it acknowledges the curious gap in ages between the pre-teen majority of the student body and the few of rather advanced age who are rather more developed bodily, with Millicent saying of Clarence’s daughter, “She’s well over school-age as it is.” Still, I was more than a bit uneasy when one of the clearly adult students seduces Michael Ripper’s stablehand as part of the scheme to abduct a horse. It is telling, yet still curious, the school’s motto appears to be “in flagrante delicto”.
Every second of The Belles of St. Trinian’s is a pleasure. It is interesting to see Sim in two roles and, to my considerable surprise, he disappears completely into that of Millicent. The school, however unscrupulous and dangerous, looks like a blast, and not only when things are literally exploding. It even appears to be good initiation into the ways of the world, with alumni showing up in the third act to grab spears, swords and shields to save the day. As Milicent puts it: “At most schools, girls leave unprepared for the merciless world. When our girls go out of here, it is the merciless world which has to be prepared.”
Dir: Frank Laudner
Starring Alastair Sim, Joyce Grenfell, George Cole
Watched as part of the Film Movement blu-ray box set Alastair Sim’s School for Laughter: 4 Classic Comedies