This was a real find. I had never heard of it before but it caught my eye and I am very glad it did. The simple plot follows the staff at a stuffy English boy's school on the first day of term. When twice as much luggage as expected arrives, they find out that unbeknownst to them, an additional 100 boys are expected to arrive from another institution which has been evacuated, but to the horror of the Headmaster and professors, the arriving students are from St. Swithins, an all girl's school. This of course will simply not do - this is England after all. The staff scrambles to keep the boys and girls separate but when some of the girl's parents and school inspectors arrive, things get worse. With important guests in the school, the staff attempt to conduct two tours simultaneously and seperately. They are all trying to avoid eachother while presenting a professional front - it had that manic, farcical feel of a classic episode of Fawlty Towers.
The dialogue and delivery are both just wonderful, the script rolls off the tongue with the type of class you don't readily find these days - like in The Thin Man or the opening of Sullivan's Tavels. It got me thinking of any modern examples of wonderful, characterful dialogue delivery throughout a film; Glengarry Glen Ross and Doubt sprang to mind, plus some of the Merchant Ivory classics, and I'm sure many many others.
This had the Ealing studios fingerprints all over it, and does unsurprisingly share a screenwriter credit with the wonderful Kind Hearts and Coronets. It has an extremely comforting setting, I was entirely happy to spend time there with the characters. And the performances from Margaret Rutherford and Alastair Sim were both right out of the top drawer. Their chemistry was second to none, I don't know but it felt like they had acted along side one another many times before. The two of them carried the film but all the minor characters were good aswell (I found it interesting that for a story about two schools, there are essentially no child characters)
Some films are mildly or strongly charming, but this goes beyond that, it is simply delightful. It is not easy to explain exactly why but it is one of those watches that comes along occasionally where your smile grows broader with each passong minute.
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