Back to School Month: The Belles of St Trinians (Dir Frank Launder, 1h 26m, 1954)

With children back to school, so my thoughts turn to the schools of cinema; in places, they are proving grounds for our young protagonists, places in which our characters meet life-long friends, and find their identities, in others, faceless cruel systems in which our heroes have to rage against bullies, teachers, and corrupt institutions, and in others yet, a microcosm of teenage life, with its cliques, gangs, nerds and jocks. Over September, we'll be looking at films as wide apart as an infamous imagined school uprising in 1972's If... to the blackly comic peek at the dark underbelly of teenage school life in the cult 1989 film Heathers.

But today we start a little closer to home, with one of cinema's most (in)famous school, St Trinians. Created by Ronald Searle, (equally well known for the co-creation of beloved, and equally dysfunctional schoolboy, Molesworth), and beginning in 1941, St Trinians' is, simply, a riot, a school full of cruel teachers, and juvenile delinquent girls, full of amusingly outlandish antics such as alcohol making, gambling, a disturbing amount of violence, and general impropriety.

It is also riotously anti-establishment, a merrily jabbed two fingers up at the halcyon childhoods that the boarding schools of Enid Blyton et al's heroines enjoyed, and remarkably dark, coloured by Searle's years in Japanese prisoner of war camps during World War II, which saw later St Trinians' episodes turn darker and more outlandish, introducing a cast of hangers on, including spivs and government inspections, and feature a remarkably modern sensibility in its depiction of its female characters.

It was thus seemingly inevitable that St Trinians would receive a cinematic adaption, and over the years, from the four films made in the late 50s to mid 60s, to an underwhelming reboot in the 1980s, to a revival in the late 2000s, so the series has remained a cultural touchstone for generations of rebellious girls, and a prime example of British comedy's evolution through the decades. But no film captures the spirit of Searle's books better than the original, The Belles of St Trinians, a film not so much manned as stuffed with the best of British comic talent of the period, in which a plot to steal a racehorse could either doom or save the school, as it descends into civil war.

Without a doubt, the film captures the feel of the books from its first moment, in which we are introduced to a sultan who decides to send his daughter, Fatima to St Trinians, to the slow introduction of the school's pupils, introduced in a first person shot through a bus window, and skilfully intercut with the residents of the nearby towns and villages preparing for the storm that is about, once more, to hit their area, including several brilliant visual gags and vignettes that very much set the scene for the rest of the film.

It is here that the film introduces its secret weapon, Alistar Sim. Playing both the headmistress of the school, Millicent (in drag, that the film, much like its 2000s revival, remarkably never plays for laughs), and Clarence, her brother, a bookmaker, whose scheming together with his daughter, Arabella, is centred around a particularly valuable racehorse, Arab Boy, who the Sultan has stabled nearby to St Trinians. This horse poses a threat to the horse that Clarence and his associates have backed, and could ruin him if it wins.

 Sim's dual performance is nothing short of a masterpiece; there are, in this initial meeting, a remarkable number of shots that feature both of Sim's characters on screen at the same time, a trick that's still impressive today, never mind 1954. Moreover, there is a great comic sensibility to both of them-Clarence has the menace of the best Ealing comedy villains, a mask that slips constantly as the fear of being ruined resurfaces time and again as his plans to hobble Arab Boy are undermined by the girls of St Trinians. Millicent, meanwhile, is a comic tour-de-force, a larger-than-life figure whose passion to teaching and preparing her pupils for the world are ably matched by her constant concern for the school's continuing existence, and their lack of money

From here, we, through the eyes of the new pupils, including Fatima, see the school, and the two groups that essentially make up its two factions, the sexually provocative Sixth Formers, and the positively feral Fourth form, an ink-stained mob who cause chaos wherever they go-and the film films this chaos to perfection, getting full into the action as the girls engage in pillow fights, warring with the Sixth form in the film's finale, and against any form of authority. The teachers, for their part, are perfectly executed thumbnail sketches of character-given the perfect-and comedic details they need and dropped into the story, from the remarkably louche French mistress to the smoking, golfing and surprisingly masculine coded maths teacher.

From here, the story begins to gather pace, with the beleaguered superintendent, Bird, going to the head of the Ministry of Education, an equally nervous and sublimely uncomfortable performance by Richard Wattis, leading to the helpless official sending Bird back on his way, and forced to recruit his girlfriend, the excellent, and, one could argue, audience surrogate,  Joyce Grenfell, who essentially plays straight man to a veritable rogue's gallery of talent, to go undercover to investigate the school. This, together with the introduction of George Cole's Flash Harry, a down-and-out odd-jobber who proves to be a superb comic foil to much of the cast, and the discovery of the time trials involving Arab Boy

Thus, with both the Sixth Form girls, including Arabella, and the Fourth Form using their skills in seduction and calculation to work out that Arab Boy will surely win the Cheltenham Gold Cup, so a plot is hatched by each group-the Sixth Form girls to hobble the horse, eventually by borrowing it so it will not be able to run, and the fourth form girls to bet on it, which eventually develops into Millicent taking the £400 that the school has and betting it on the horse in order to generate the £4,000 the school desperately needs for repairs. Thus, a battle of wits-and eventually a battle between the Sixth Form girls, Clarence's underlings, the Fourth Form, the Teachers and eventually a fearsome contingent of Old Girls, in which Arab Boy, a mere, if comic bystander in his own fate, is smuggled out of the school, to win the race and save the school.

This finale is everything perfect about this film-a mixture of excellently written character, chaotic if excellently shot moments, and a surprisingly deft touch to the film's portrayal of young women. For a film fast approaching seventy years old, it is remarkably modern feeling in its depiction of women, pupils and teachers alike, with the butt of much of the film's jokes being stuffy, greedy, or authority-bound men. It is a film that, despite that great sense that humour is generational, remains, perhaps because the idea of the rumbustious school girl flies merrily in the face of authority, because we love the comic underdog, remains almost painfully funny. It epitomises the public school experience to the chaos and community and cliques, and in doing so, perhaps has more truth than any sanitised or rose-tinted view of this period in many peoples' lives ever have

Rating: Highly Recommended