In one of his surprisingly few memorable non-Monty Python films, the great John Cleese plays a demonically punctual High School Head Master taking a day off to address a National Education Conference out of town. What could go wrong? Er, just about everything in this original script from farce-master Michael Frayn, author of NOISES OFF, a modern theatrical classic of the form. (Ignore Peter Bogdanovich’s unhappy film adaptation.) Always tricky on film, farce is all but inimical to naturalistic film conventions, thriving in the sliding walls & restricted confines of a proscenium stage, like a pressure cooker to raise comic temperature. On film, even Frayn can get bogged down in setups, here relying too heavily on Cleese’s verbal tic of saying ‘Right!,’ when he means ‘Yes!’ A missed train; a wife & old schoolmate deceived; a trio of batty seniors; a schoolgirl who’s stolen Dad’s car and is ending her affair with the music teacher; said teacher in mad pursuit; a bath in a monastery . . . and so on. Bumps and all, a trip worth taking. Especially once past the half hour mark, when director Christopher Morahan takes a moment to let Frayn pivot as Cleese takes stock of his options at a roadside phone booth. Just what the film needs now that all the balls are in the air, the pause that refreshes. And suddenly, everything clicks and comic hysteria builds. As Cleese memorably says at a low point, ‘It’s not the despair . . . I can stand the despair, it’s the hope!’
DOUBLE-BILL: Check out Michael Frayn’s serious side in COPENHAGEN/’02, his look at the infamous meeting of nuclear physicists Niels Bohr & Werner Heisenberg during WWII; the same meeting that figures in the climax of the Moe Berg saga THE CATCHER WAS A SPY/’18.
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