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ACTOR
Alastair SimMargaret RutherfordJohn TurnbullRichard Wattis
DIRECTOR
Frank Launder
SYNOPSICS
The Happiest Days of Your Life (1950) is a English movie. Frank Launder has directed this movie. Alastair Sim,Margaret Rutherford,John Turnbull,Richard Wattis are the starring of this movie. It was released in 1950. The Happiest Days of Your Life (1950) is considered one of the best Comedy movie in India and around the world.
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The Happiest Days of Your Life (1950) Reviews
80 mins of absolute joy
From the golden period of British films, this has my vote for one of the funniest of all time. Screened yesterday at my Film Society to a rapturous audience, I was astonished at how well the comedy has lasted (made in 1950!). It is really down to the expert timing and inimitable playing from two of the finest actors Britain has produced: Margaret Rutherford and Alastair Sim. Adapted from a play by John Dighton, this farce is briskly handled by director Frank Launder. The plot is simple: A ministry mistake billets a girls' school on a boys' school. I will always laugh when I think of this film.
St Swithin's versus Nutbourne!
A bumbling error at the Ministry Of Education results in Nutbourne Boys School having to share with St Swithin's School For Girls. This bemuses the respective head teachers of each school and leads to all manner of chaotic goings on, however the two are forced to come to an uneasy alliance in the hope of averting major trouble. The Happiest Days Of Your Life is based on the John Dighton play from 1948, with Dighton writing the part of Headmistress Whitchurch specifically for Margaret Rutherford. Replacing George Howe from the play in the role of Headmaster Pond, is Alastair Sim, and herein lies the crowning glory of this filmic adaptation, Sim & Rutherford are perfectly wonderful, bouncing off each other to keep what is basically a one joke movie, highly entertaining. Directed by the gifted Frank Launder, and produced by the equally adroit Sidney Gilliat, The Happiest Days Of Your Life is a quintessentially British movie, obviously a precursor to the St Trinians franchise, the film entertains the children with it's high jinks clash of the sexes heart, whilst tickling the watching adults with its very saucy undercurrent. Thankfully the chaotic ending cements all that has gone before it to leave this particular viewer with a grin as wide as Nutbourne Rail Station. Great fun. 8/10
Margaret Rutherford at her Best!
After a long run in the West End this charming film re-cast Margaret Rutherford as the Headmistress 'Miss Whitchurch' in this financially successful adaptation made in 1950. All interior shots took place at Riverside studios in Hammersmith, London. The exterior scenes were filmed on location at a public girl's school near Liss in Hampshire. During the 12 - week shoot both Margaret Rutherford and Joyce Grenfell were staying in a hotel nearby and would often visit the school during the evenings where they would happily enjoy the company of the real school mistresses. Although the film's script contains only two original lines from the original play the leads and supporting actors are in fine form and you can only feel sympathetic for their predicament especially in the final scenes.
Great place to start for British wit
This film, without doubt, is the clearest example of the British humour the Germans can't understand. One-liners run rampant in a film spawning one of the greatest series of films in British cinema history (St.Trinians). The story of bureaucratic incompetence amid post-war trials enables Frank Launder to direct maximum talent from all the cast. It's probably the only film in which Margaret Rutherford meets her match, in Alastair Sim, for forceful characterisation (she still wins though). Joyce Grenfell (bless her) and Richard Wattis both deserve mentions in Dighton's masterpiece of English etiquette and stiff upper lip under pressure. No Rutherford/Sim/Grenfell fan would be without this in their collection. Absolutely brilliant. Why 9/10? Only 83mins long.
My all-time favourite comedy film
This film was made thirteen years before I was born but I still think it is the wittiest, dottiest, most harmless piece of fun ever made. It simply could not go wrong with the cast of superb British character actors it boasts. Where to start? Alastair Sim-peerless; Margaret Rutherford-ditto;the wonderfully alkward, innocent Gossage, played to perfection by the imperious Joyce Grenfell. The caddish Victor Hyde-Brown (a Guy Middleton special) and the rest of the staff sum up post-war middle-class England to a tee. The humour is sometimes obvious, but it is of that special "Ealing" variety and is never offensive. I have watched this film more times than I care to remember and still laugh like a drain at the antics every time. The storming of the dorms occupied by the girls school, the magnificently-planned but ultimately doomed twin tours of the school and the chaotic ending involving the arrival of a third school to add to the anarchy, are priceless. It's an old cliché I know, but they really do not make them like that anymore. How I wish they did. If you haven't seen it, please do, you won't be disappointed.