The Belles of St. Trinian's (1954)

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

The inmates are running the asylum in this very funny British comedy about an all girl's school in which the students run rings around the not so rosy teachers who couldn't control them with a chair and a whip. Yes, Alastair Sim's Miss Fritton might look like a more showered version of "Matilda's" Miss Trunchbull, but she has the discipline capacity of a kitten. Indeed, Alastair Sims is in drag here, as well as playing Miss Fritton's brother, a rather sordid fellow with ties to a horse racing syndicate. When the brother learns that a Muslim princess has become a student, he brings his expelled daughter (the student ringleader) back, using his family ties to get sister to forgive her niece and take her back. Unbeknownst to the faculty, a police officer in disguise as a new teacher has arrived, and it is the seemingly prim and proper Joyce Grenfell who uses liberal forms of education to try to keep the girls in line but finds even that method cannot control these heathens who are desperate to make some cash from the local horse racing syndicate themselves. This brings in a criminal element when a valuable horse is stolen by the girls, but never underestimate the power of hundreds of screaming teens as they set their sites on increasing their paltry bank accounts.It is the performances here which are quite more memorable than the film itself which runs about 15 minutes too long and isn't quite as funny as I hoped it would be. Certainly, Sim is superb, a comic genius even in playing humorless officials in other films, and of course, best known for arguably the most popular version of "A Christmas Carol". He fortunately does not overplay the femininity of Miss Fritton or camp it up, so he simply just looks like a rather large, eccentric British matron. Grenfell, an actress I've caught in a few movies and tremendously enjoyed, underplays her part as well, although I missed her eccentric voice that she utilized in other films. That aspect alone shows her versatility, although on occasion, you can catch a glimpse of that part of her personality. She knew that this was a straight role, so she kept that aspect of her acting chops out of it. Still, memories of those other films (and an imitation of her by Kaye Ballard on "The Mothers-in-Law") prevail. so Grenfell is an actress quite worth exploring. Some of the other well known British character actors really are just part of the ensemble including Beryl Reid, deliciously teaching her students geography through the history of champagne, and a very masculine made up Hermoine Baddeley, but it is the ensemble of girls (one of whom is drawn and quartered in an attempt to get information from) who get the most laughs in addition to Sim and Grenfell.

Choose your fate: The terrible tykes of the fourth form, playing practical jokes that involve axes, or the...ummm...well-developed girls of the sixth form, who discovered some time ago cigarettes, gin, sex and how easily men can be led astray. The problem is that one set comes with the other. They are all there at St. Trinian's, that remarkably easy-going English school for girls led by headmistress Millicent Fritton (Alastair Sim). As Miss Fritton is fond of pointing out, "In other schools girls are sent out quite unprepared into a merciless world, but when our girls leave here, it is the merciless world which has to be prepared." Miss Fritton sounds something like a melding of Julia Child and Eleanor Roosevelt, and definitely has Sim's droll and deadpan comic genes. In The Belles of St. Trinian's, a sly, chaotic comedy from the team of Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat, St. Trinian's is, as usual, on the brink of financial disaster. Salvation may be at hand, however, when a rich sheik sends his daughter to join the fourth form and receive a proper English education. The sheik also is a horse owner and one of his prize racers, Arab Boy, is being trained near the school for a race. It's only a matter of time before the fourth- form girls form a racing pool and bet heavily on Arab Boy, with Miss Fritton adding to the pool what funds the school has left. (Much of the fourth-form girl's money comes from the gin they make in chemistry, then bottle and lower by rope to Flash Harry (George Cole), a Cockney fixer, for distribution. "It's got something...I don't know quite what," says Miss Fritton on sampling the stuff, "but send a few bottles up to my room.") Miss Fritton, however, has a brother, Clarence Fritton (who, by some coincidence of casting, also is Alastair Sim), a bookmaker who not only has placed a bundle on another horse, but who also has a daughter. And he has placed the precocious Arabella in the sixth form to keep him informed. Soon the sixth form has kidnapped Arab Boy, the fourth form has taken the horse back, Flash Harry has joined forces with Miss Fritton, the sixth-form girls are determined that Arab Boy will not leave the second floor of St. Trinian's, Clarence and his Homburg-wearing gang have arrived, parents are driving up for Parent's Day and the Ministry of Education has arrived in the person of a very proper inspector. Total war breaks out at St. Trinian's. It's hard to say which is more dangerous, the African spears or the flour bombs. Alastair Sim as Millicent Fritton turns in a tour de force performance. Miss Fritton is a tall woman with a stately bosom, fond of long gowns with embroidered lace and Edwardian hats with lots of feathers. She takes everything in stride, even a fourth-former pounding at something in chemistry class and, after hearing an explosion a few minutes later, the results. "Oh dear. I told Bessie to be careful with that nitro-glycerine!" She is firm in believing that St. Trinian's is "a gay arcadia of happy girls." Sim was one of Britain's great eccentric actors. Other than the sheer chaos of all the little (and not so little) girls doing terrible things, he delivers much of the film's pleasure.

For those of you unfamiliar with Alisdair Sims, he is of course THE definitive Scrooge of all them Christmas Carol movies. (Me? I guess I'm REALLY bad.. I haven't actually seen the darn thing). I guess those who HAVE seen Christmas Carol and so used to his character might find The Bells of St. Trinians rather surprising. You see, in this movie, Sims has two roles. One, he plays a heavy better, and in the other, he's in drag as a headmistress for a private girl's school! So once you get that through your thick skull, this movie offers plenty of delights. The plot is deals with the way the school tries to make some desperately needed money through a horse race. It's actually a little more complicated for the small kids to handle, but I think they would be preoccupied with their antics, and with the horses to really notice. The adults too might get tripped over all the thick accents being thrown around as well. But again, the story is reasonably light, the action crazy and frenetic, for one to really notice. PS, the kids all look like they come from the Eloise school of cuteness.

There are other movies about boarding schools and the antics of the students and staff, but "The Belles of St. Trinian's" towers above them all! The plot has been thoroughly summarized by other posters, so I won't cover the same ground. I just want to say that it's a shame that it's FINALLY out on DVD, but in a format that can't be used in the U.S.! :-( Enjoy, fellow fans in New Zealand and Australia! And if anyone reading this has any pull in such matters, PLEASE help get it released on DVD with Region 1 encoding! Also, is it possible to be notified via e-mail when (I won't say "if") it is released on DVD in the United States? Thanks!