After just reviewing The Courier a British spy thriller set in the 1960’s, we are going further back in time to the 1950’s for a classic British farce that is just being released on Blu Ray.  Exactly why Independent film studio Film Movement are resurrecting is unsure.  This quintessential British post-world-war-2 movie will no doubt delight avid Anglophiles but probably not many other filmgoers.

Filmed in 1954 with Food Rationing only just phased out, the country was still quite austere and badly in need of cheering up.  The British Lion Film Corporation hired veteran filmmakers Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat to create this comic yarn about an unruly Girls Boarding School.  To top it off they cast leading British classic actor Alistair Sim as both the lovable bumbling Headmistress and her wayward gambling brother.

Probably not the first time the main character in a British film was in drag, but it became one of the most well known and liked in UK film history.

With St Trinians teetering on the edge of bankruptcy Headmistress Miss Fritton (Sims) jumps at the chance of taking in a new pupil who is the daughter of a (very rich) Sultan (Eric Pohlmann).  He also plans to stable his racehorses near by.  That’s an important detail , as when the near delinquent band of teenage pupils,  discover this they plan to wager a large bet on the next time the horse races.  So too does Miss Fritton who thinks a large win would solve all the school’s dire financial needs 

The plot, as such, is hardly Shakespeare, but is there simply to give an exceptional cast of stalwart Brit comics and actors a scene or two to shine.  They include  Joyce Grenfell, Beryl Reid, Joan Sims, Hermione Baddeley, Irene Handl, Renee Houston and George Cole.

The film was number 3 at the UK Box office that year, but more importantly it was the start of  a series of St Trinian sequels which went on to 1966 with. The Great St Trinian’s Train Robbery. Part of the nostalgia is that they recount the days when filmmakers wanted the world to believe  that  all Brits, regardless of class, spoke with plummy upper class accents.  As if.

N.B. St Trinian aficionados were up in arms when Rupert Everett copied Alastair Sim in  a 2009 remake, which was so bad it sunk without trace,

https://filmmovement.com/product/the-belles-of-st-trinian-s Also available on Itunes, Vudu and Amazon