TOPSY-TURVY (1999)

Any doubts over Mike Leigh’s politically engaged left-leaning politics and improvisitory script development methods irreparably clashing with a bio-pic on librettist William Schwenck Gilbert & composer Arthur Sullivan, supremos of late-Victorian comic operetta, and how they came to write THE MIKADO, are joyously unwarranted in one of the best films ever made on the creative process. Everything turned out right on this one, from casting (special nods to Jim Broadbent’s Gilbert & Timothy Spall’s lead comedian), to sets & costumes (gorgeous attention to period detail, with fine captures of THE MIKADO premiere, tacitly acknowledging The Savoy Theatre's historic place as the world’s first electrically lit), and that rarest of assets, a factual theatrical story worth the telling. Gilbert, an eccentric terror (Broadbent merely sitting to read his script one of the great highlights) and Sullivan, nicest of musical geniuses, warring with his natural gift for light entertainment. Yet in the long view, it's undoubtedly Sullivan’s ability to give flesh & blood thru music to Gilbert’s puppet characters and tempered social satire that keep these wonderful pieces alive as great works of popular art. And Leigh structures it so brilliantly, not quite linear, with chinks in almost everyone’s armor (addiction and backstage feuds, fear of intimacy, physical decline & artistic stifling vanity), so that non-G&S enthusiasts can find a way in to the drama, laughs, triumphs & poignancy.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: An earlier attempt at a bio-pic, imaginatively entitled GILBERT AND SULLIVAN/’53 (not seen here), even with a perfectly cast Robert Morley as Schwenk, was a notorious commercial flop. While an official, slightly reconfigured, filmed version of THE MIKADO/’39, cast largely with company men & designs, is too reverent for its own good. (see below)

DOUBLE-BILL: One of the few films of note to bring off similar concerns on life/art/theater: Jean Renoir’s FRENCH CANCAN/’55, now out in a spectacular restoration.