The Wrong Box. (U.)
Directed by Bryan Forbes. 1966.
Starring John Mills, Ralph Richardson, Michael Caine, Wilfrid Lawson, Nanette Newman, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Peter Sellers and Tony Hancock. Out on Blu-ray from Indicator Films on July 27th. 106 mins.
The star-studded cast is the cinema's most enduring and effective scam. However many times you've been stung, when you see a cast list full of big names you just have to check it out: if all those good people are in it, it can't be all bad, can it? Bryan Forbes' Victorian farce The Wrong Box doesn't just have a good cast, it has an absurdly good cast: the young Michael Caine; the old Mills and Richardson; Pete'n'Dud on the big screen for the first time; Hancock for the last. And there's even music from John Barry. With that level of talent involved it's just got to be good. And it is: not as good as you'd like, but good enough.
This period comedy is a trip back to a golden era when England ruled the world: '66, swinging London, the World Cup, psychedelia. This point of ascendency engendered a curiosity about the previous peak, a look back to the Victorian era to see how the two periods match up. In the Wrong Box there's a disapproval of the prudishness of their ancestors but also a grudging admiration.
The plot is a black comic farce based on a book co-authored by Robert Louis Stevenson and it begins with the establishment of Tontine. A tontine, at least in this story, is a kind of last man standing lottery. When they are kids their fathers all put in £1000 to an account that will be carefully invested and managed and handed over to the last survivor. How this was ever thought to be a prudent fiscal measure I can't imagine, but in this story at least there is no hint of skullduggery until the pool has been whittled down to the final pair: brothers Mills and Richardson.
The film is at its best in its first third. The montage of tontine demises in various outposts of the Empire is top hole stuff and features people like Graham Stark, Jeremy Lloyd, Leonard Rossiter, Valentine Dyall and Nicholas Parson. The setting up of the opposition between the ageing brothers - the garrulous trivia bore Richardson and bitter bedridden Mills – and their dependents – Cook, Moore and Newman on one side; Caine on the other – has some zest to it. There is a marvellously staged, almost surreal, sequence in the aftermath of a train crash.
But after the set up, the comedy moves from dark to farce. There's a mixing up of boxes, obviously; Mills attempts to kill off Richardson who is oblivious to his actions, and the mechanics of it get a bit tiresome. I was also thrown by the use of That Regency Crescent in Bath, the one in all Jane Austen adaptations, to represent the location of the brothers' homes in London.
As the film's main appeal is its cast, let's conclude with the scorecard. Richardson gives a splendid comic turn; he had a casual way of playing eccentrics that was always amusing. The joke in the film is that he is the most tedious company imaginable but the film really suffers when the plot calls on him to disappear for a half hour. In contrast, Mills is stuck with a dull role, that he overplays.
Cook and Moore's partnership translates falteringly to the big screen. Interestingly, even here you can see that Dudley is better suited to movie acting. He has less to do than his partner but there's a glee to it that shows his comfort up there. The big screen exposes a deadness in Cook; probably this is the distance and disdain that made him so funny in every other avenue, but the movies never took to it.
Possibly the film's best pairing is Caine and Newman, engaged in a shy, awkward courtship. Caine was still in the first flush of a stardom established by the phenomenal back to back hat trick of Zulu, The Ipcress File and Alfie. That's probably as dramatic and overpowering a 0 to 100 introduction to fame as any movie star has ever managed. Here he plays against type as a modest, shy suitor and does it without any attempts to outshine his co-stars. Opposite him, Nanette Newman is very endearing as his chaste object of affection.
Newman uttered the line, "Why kill time when you can kill yourself," when she was playing a Parisian existentialist in Tony Hancock's masterly film The Rebel. Hancock is the second of the big-name comedy cameos, but while Sellers is amusing with just a dab of pathos in his couple of scenes as a seedy doctor, Hancock looks a little lost playing a detective who, rather poignantly, can't keep up with what is going on.
Hancock would have been a full-on alcoholic by this time, just two years before his suicide, and though I couldn't find anything in the extras about him being difficult to work with, the editing of his early scenes suggest he had to be worked around. When his character first appears, without any kind of introduction, his speech is cut away from twice. In other scenes, it is noticeable that he doesn't meet the other actor's eyes. He often seems to be reading lines off of the chest of the actor opposite him. He got into the habit of using cue cards recording The Blood Donor. A car accident meant he couldn't learn his line in time for the show, and having gotten through it successfully once, he kept on doing it. If you watch that episode his wandering eyeline is distracting but his delivery is impeccable; here though it just makes him seem that bit more distanced and apart from everything going on around him. He's a featured cast wallflower.
Extras.
The BEHP Interview with Bryan Forbes (1994,
102 mins): an archival audio recording, made as part of the British Entertainment History Project, featuring the celebrated filmmaker in conversation with Roy Fowler
• Audio commentary with film historians Josephine Botting and Vic Pratt
• Box of Delights (2018, 21 mins): award-winning actor Nanette Newman talks about The Wrong Box and her work with husband Bryan Forbes
• Box Cutting (2018, 10 mins): a new interview with assistant editor Willy Kemplen
• Chasing the Cast (2018, 11 mins): second assistant director Hugh Harlow recalls his experiences on set
• Original theatrical trailer
Directed by Bryan Forbes. 1966.
Starring John Mills, Ralph Richardson, Michael Caine, Wilfrid Lawson, Nanette Newman, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Peter Sellers and Tony Hancock. Out on Blu-ray from Indicator Films on July 27th. 106 mins.
The star-studded cast is the cinema's most enduring and effective scam. However many times you've been stung, when you see a cast list full of big names you just have to check it out: if all those good people are in it, it can't be all bad, can it? Bryan Forbes' Victorian farce The Wrong Box doesn't just have a good cast, it has an absurdly good cast: the young Michael Caine; the old Mills and Richardson; Pete'n'Dud on the big screen for the first time; Hancock for the last. And there's even music from John Barry. With that level of talent involved it's just got to be good. And it is: not as good as you'd like, but good enough.
This period comedy is a trip back to a golden era when England ruled the world: '66, swinging London, the World Cup, psychedelia. This point of ascendency engendered a curiosity about the previous peak, a look back to the Victorian era to see how the two periods match up. In the Wrong Box there's a disapproval of the prudishness of their ancestors but also a grudging admiration.
The plot is a black comic farce based on a book co-authored by Robert Louis Stevenson and it begins with the establishment of Tontine. A tontine, at least in this story, is a kind of last man standing lottery. When they are kids their fathers all put in £1000 to an account that will be carefully invested and managed and handed over to the last survivor. How this was ever thought to be a prudent fiscal measure I can't imagine, but in this story at least there is no hint of skullduggery until the pool has been whittled down to the final pair: brothers Mills and Richardson.
The film is at its best in its first third. The montage of tontine demises in various outposts of the Empire is top hole stuff and features people like Graham Stark, Jeremy Lloyd, Leonard Rossiter, Valentine Dyall and Nicholas Parson. The setting up of the opposition between the ageing brothers - the garrulous trivia bore Richardson and bitter bedridden Mills – and their dependents – Cook, Moore and Newman on one side; Caine on the other – has some zest to it. There is a marvellously staged, almost surreal, sequence in the aftermath of a train crash.
But after the set up, the comedy moves from dark to farce. There's a mixing up of boxes, obviously; Mills attempts to kill off Richardson who is oblivious to his actions, and the mechanics of it get a bit tiresome. I was also thrown by the use of That Regency Crescent in Bath, the one in all Jane Austen adaptations, to represent the location of the brothers' homes in London.
As the film's main appeal is its cast, let's conclude with the scorecard. Richardson gives a splendid comic turn; he had a casual way of playing eccentrics that was always amusing. The joke in the film is that he is the most tedious company imaginable but the film really suffers when the plot calls on him to disappear for a half hour. In contrast, Mills is stuck with a dull role, that he overplays.
Cook and Moore's partnership translates falteringly to the big screen. Interestingly, even here you can see that Dudley is better suited to movie acting. He has less to do than his partner but there's a glee to it that shows his comfort up there. The big screen exposes a deadness in Cook; probably this is the distance and disdain that made him so funny in every other avenue, but the movies never took to it.
Possibly the film's best pairing is Caine and Newman, engaged in a shy, awkward courtship. Caine was still in the first flush of a stardom established by the phenomenal back to back hat trick of Zulu, The Ipcress File and Alfie. That's probably as dramatic and overpowering a 0 to 100 introduction to fame as any movie star has ever managed. Here he plays against type as a modest, shy suitor and does it without any attempts to outshine his co-stars. Opposite him, Nanette Newman is very endearing as his chaste object of affection.
Newman uttered the line, "Why kill time when you can kill yourself," when she was playing a Parisian existentialist in Tony Hancock's masterly film The Rebel. Hancock is the second of the big-name comedy cameos, but while Sellers is amusing with just a dab of pathos in his couple of scenes as a seedy doctor, Hancock looks a little lost playing a detective who, rather poignantly, can't keep up with what is going on.
Hancock would have been a full-on alcoholic by this time, just two years before his suicide, and though I couldn't find anything in the extras about him being difficult to work with, the editing of his early scenes suggest he had to be worked around. When his character first appears, without any kind of introduction, his speech is cut away from twice. In other scenes, it is noticeable that he doesn't meet the other actor's eyes. He often seems to be reading lines off of the chest of the actor opposite him. He got into the habit of using cue cards recording The Blood Donor. A car accident meant he couldn't learn his line in time for the show, and having gotten through it successfully once, he kept on doing it. If you watch that episode his wandering eyeline is distracting but his delivery is impeccable; here though it just makes him seem that bit more distanced and apart from everything going on around him. He's a featured cast wallflower.
Extras.
The BEHP Interview with Bryan Forbes (1994,
102 mins): an archival audio recording, made as part of the British Entertainment History Project, featuring the celebrated filmmaker in conversation with Roy Fowler
• Audio commentary with film historians Josephine Botting and Vic Pratt
• Box of Delights (2018, 21 mins): award-winning actor Nanette Newman talks about The Wrong Box and her work with husband Bryan Forbes
• Box Cutting (2018, 10 mins): a new interview with assistant editor Willy Kemplen
• Chasing the Cast (2018, 11 mins): second assistant director Hugh Harlow recalls his experiences on set
• Original theatrical trailer
