Two recent viewings reminded me I have so much left to discover of classic British cinema, particularly in crime capers: Perfect Friday and The Walking Stick.
A nation that produced the theatrical gold standard in William Shakespeare could not fail to produce an endlessly rich and rewarding body of celluloid masterworks. Whatever limitations of the medium there are, they’re always overcome by some of the greatest actors and directors the industry has produced.
Directors: Sir David Lean; Sidney Gilliat; Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger; Carol Reed; Charlie Chaplin; Joseph Losey (even though American I thought his best work was done as an ex-pat in England); Lindsay Anderson; Richard Attenborough; Alfred Hitchcock; Sidney J. Furie; Ken Russell; Basil Dearden;
Perfect Friday: an unassuming, all-but-invisible-to-his-coworkers clerk (the too soon departed Stanley Baker) hatches the “perfect” plot to swindle his bank using the services of down-at-the-heels nobleman David Warner (with nothing left of his family legacy except IOU’s and a terminal sense of entitlement), and his high-maintenance wife (the hypnotically sensual Ursula Andress). After many twists and attempts to second-guess the denouement, someone ends up laughing all the way….
The Walking Stick: hirsute bohemian artist manque’ David Hemmings persists until he thaws straitlaced, crippled future spinster Samantha Eggar (below left), who initially stunned me with her runner-up status in the looks department to eternal boyhood crush Diana Rigg (below right). Hemmings encourages Eggar to ditch her cane ~ a physical as well as psychological crutch ~ in pursuit of freedom and companionship, which she appears to have found, until she reads the fine print in his social contract.
