Barnacle Bill (1957 film)
Barnacle Bill | |
---|---|
Metro Goldwyn Mayer | |
Release date |
|
Running time | 87 minutes |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Budget | $659,000[2] |
Box office | $950,000[2] |
Barnacle Bill (U.S. title: All at Sea) is a 1957 Ealing Studios comedy film directed by Charles Frend and starring Alec Guinness.[3] It was written by T. E. B. Clarke. Guinness plays an unsuccessful Royal Navy officer and six of his maritime ancestors.
This was the final
Plot
William Horatio Ambrose wants desperately to live up to the proud family naval tradition. Ambrose has a debilitating problem however: he suffers from violent seasickness. As a result, his contribution to the Second World War consists of testing cures for the malady.
When he retires from the Royal Navy (RN) as a captain, he purchases a dilapidated late Victorian era amusement pier (the closest thing to a command of his own) with his life savings. The workers are an apathetic bunch, led by the insolent Figg, who quits as soon as the new owner begins imposing some semblance of discipline. With the assistance of his new second-in-command, a former RN rating named Tommy, and much hard work with the help of a group of bored local teenagers, Ambrose soon has the pier repaired.
Then he has to deal with the local town council, headed by the crooked Mayor Crowley and the hostile Arabella Barrington, who mistakes him for a
Thwarted, Crowley hires Figg to take his
Cast
- Alec Guinness as Captain William Horatio Ambrose
- Irene Browne as Mrs Barrington
- Maurice Denham as Mayor Crowley
- Percy Herbert as Tommy
- Victor Maddern as Figg
- Allan Cuthbertson as Chailey
- Donald Pleasence as Cashier
- Harold Goodwin as Duckworth
- Richard Wattis as Registrar of Shipping
- Lionel Jeffries as Garrod
- George Rose as Bullen
- Lloyd Lamble as Superintendent Browning
- Harry Locke as Reporter
- Jackie Collins as June
- Eric Pohlmann as Liberamanian Consul
- Joan Hickson as Mrs Kent
- Charles Cullum as Major Kent
- Miles Malleson as Angler
- Charles Lloyd-Pack as Tritton
- Warren Mitchell as Artie White
- Elsie Wagstaff as Mrs Gray
- Sam Kydd as Frogman, "Davy Jones"
Production
Guinness appeared in the film as a favour to the director. In later years, he recalled it as "wretched, (a film) ... I never wanted to do and only did out of friendship to Charley Frend."[4] Although Barnacle Bill was the last Ealing comedy, it was shot at Hunstanton Pier[5] and Elstree Studios, as Ealing Studios had closed and was sold to the BBC for television production.[6]
Release
Barnacle Bill opened at the Empire Cinema in London on the 11 December 1957.[1]
Reception
Box office
According to MGM records above, the film cost $659,000 to make (see budget note 1 above) and earned $405,000 in the US and Canada, plus $545,000 elsewhere, ($950,000). After distribution and associated costs were deduced the film lost MGM $55,000.[2]
Critical
The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "Barnacle Bill must stand or fall by the resourcefulness with which a promising but simple central situation is developed. Although the mood is throughout iconoclastic, and there are some characteristic jibes at excesses of authority and bureaucracy, the ultimate impression is of a fair joke carried rather beyond its possibilities. Too often mildly malicious satire is uneasily coupled with more conventional slapstick and farce – a miscalculation further emphasised by the occasional hesitancy of Charles Frend's handling. Faced with slender material, Alec Guinness nevertheless brings a delicacy to the part of the guileful innocent Ambrose and, in a series of images which recall Kind Hearts and Coronets [1949], the hero's six absurd ancestors. The rest of the players are restricted to familiar but adequate caricatures. Patchy as it is, and lacking in real bite, Barnacle Bill nevertheless represents a welcome return by Ealing to the type of production which remains the company's happiest territory."[7]
Reviewing the film in The New York Times, Bosley Crowther wrote: "Mr. Clarke's whimsical notion doesn't sail quite the untroubled sea that Mr. Guinness' pier does. It runs into roughness, now and then, which requires rather diligent overacting and farcical behavior by all hands. But Mr. Guinness, who has made an art of underplaying, never goes too far overboard "[8]
The Radio Times Guide to Films gave the film 1/5 stars, writing: "The last of the Ealing comedies, this is a wearisome affair. There are echoes of Kind Hearts and Coronets (with Alec Guinness playing his ancestors in several contrived flashbacks), and the action brims over with eccentric characters who could be refugees from any of the film's more illustrious predecessors. An unfunny and slightly embarrassing bore."[9]
British film critic Leslie Halliwell said: "Quite an amusing comedy which had the misfortune to come at the tag-end of the Ealing classics and so seemed too mild and predictable. Perhaps it was a little staid."[10]
See also
References
- ^ a b "Art & Hue presents Jackie Collins". Art & Hue. 2019. Retrieved 11 April 2019.
- ^ a b c The Eddie Mannix Ledger, Los Angeles: Margaret Herrick Library, Center for Motion Picture Study.
- ^ "Barnacle Bill". British Film Institute Collections Search. Retrieved 4 February 2024.
- ISBN 978-0-7432-4498-5.
- ^ James, Derek (5 April 2022). "Remembering when Hollywood arrived in a Norfolk seaside town". Eastern Daily Press.
- ^ McGee, Scott. "This Month: All at Sea." Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved: 3 August 2013.
- ^ "Barnacle Bill". The Monthly Film Bulletin. 25 (288): 2. 1 January 1958 – via ProQuest.
- ^ Crowther, Bosley (23 December 1957). "The Screen: 'All at Sea'; Guinness Is Starred in T.E.B. Clarke script". The New York Times.
- ISBN 9780992936440.
- ISBN 0586088946.
External links
- Barnacle Bill at the TCM Movie Database
- Barnacle Bill at IMDb
- Barnacle Bill then-and-now location photographs at ReelStreets