Nothing but the Best | |
---|---|
Directed by | Clive Donner |
Written by | |
Produced by | David Deutsch |
Starring | Alan Bates Denholm Elliott Harry Andrews Millicent Martin |
Cinematography | Nicolas Roeg |
Edited by | Fergus McDonell |
Music by | Ron Grainer |
Distributed by | Anglo-Amalgamated Film Distributors Ltd. (UK) |
Release dates |
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Running time | 99 minutes |
Country | England |
Language | English |
Budget | £175,594 [1] |
Nothing but the Best is a 1964 British black comedy film directed by Clive Donner and starring Alan Bates, Denholm Elliott, Harry Andrews and Millicent Martin. [2] The screenplay by Frederic Raphael is based on the 1952 short story "The Best of Everything" by Stanley Ellin. [3]
A young and ambitious businessman hires an unemployed upper-class man to tutor him in a number of life skills.
James Brewster, a young man starting with a large London firm of estate agents and auctioneers, is ambitious to get to the top. In a cheap café, he meets Charles Prince, a drunken layabout who has everything James wants: effortless upper-class arrogance and impeccable tailoring. In return for a room to live in and loans for drink and betting, Charles agrees to tutor James in the life skills which he thinks are necessary to succeed. By bluff and sabotage, James rises in his firm, catching the eye of the owner and of his only daughter Ann.
Disaster threatens when Charles has a big win and wants to end the deal. James hastily strangles him and his landlady agrees to hide the corpse in her cellar in return for continuing their sexual liaison.
After a long courtship, Ann agrees to marry James and her father makes him a partner in the business. Having conveniently sent his lower-middle-class parents to Australia, James anticipates his success being crowned by a grand society wedding. Ann's father confesses that he has a totally disreputable son who they never see called Charles and developers who have bought the house of James' former landlady find a corpse in the cellar.
The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "The theme is Room at the Top [1959] reconstructed for laughs; the cast includes a leavening of people from TW3 ; and the attitudes are in general nicely ambiguous, so that the film (like TW3 itself) can put on quite a show of social ruthlessness and general audacity without committing itself very far in any particular direction. ... Denholm Elliott plays the 1960s remittance man in rich style, achieving precisely the right suggestion of a mannered insolence still intact, but beginning to fray badly at the edges. He also gets many of the best lines in a script which veers erratically between dialogue which is funny and accurate, and lines which dangerously undermine the film's pretensions to serious social satire. ... All the same, the script is often sharply funny, as well as being consistently inventive in the way it keeps things moving, allowing the director a range of settings and locations which are used up to the hilt. ...The director gets admirable performances from Alan Bates, as the blandly ruthless hero, Harry Andrews as his father-in-law and Pauline Delany as his cat-hugging landlady. Its main asset, however, is its sprucely cheerful good looks: for a supposedly black comedy, Nothing But the Best keeps its spirits up remarkably." [4]
British film critic Leslie Halliwell said: "Hard, skilful, rather unattractive comedy with interesting social comments on its time." [5]
The Radio Times Guide to Films gave the film 4/5 stars, writing: "Scripted by Frederic Raphael, photographed by Nicolas Roeg and directed by Clive Donner, this has all the credentials to be one of the best British big-screen satires. There's no denying it's a very funny film, a sort of School for Scoundrels [1960] in a Room at the Top, but the brushstrokes are so broad that there is no room for the finer detail that would have made it a classic. Alan Bates is splendid as a working-class wannabe, but Denholm Elliott steals every scene as an indolent aristocrat who tutors him in the delicate art of being a cad." [6]
Percy is a 1971 British comedy film directed by Ralph Thomas starring Hywel Bennett, Denholm Elliott, Elke Sommer and Britt Ekland.
Denholm Mitchell Elliott was an English actor. He appeared in numerous productions on stage and screen, receiving BAFTA awards for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Trading Places (1983), A Private Function (1984) and Defence of the Realm (1986), and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Mr. Emerson in A Room with a View (1985). He is also known for his performances in Alfie (1966), A Doll's House (1973), A Bridge Too Far (1977), Maurice (1987), September (1987), and Noises Off (1992). He portrayed Marcus Brody in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989).
Millicent Mary Lillian Martin is an English actress, singer, and comedian. She was the lone female singer of topical songs on the weekly BBC Television satirical show That Was the Week That Was, and won a BAFTA TV Award in 1964. For her work on Broadway, she received Tony Award nominations for Side by Side by Sondheim (1977) and King of Hearts (1978), both for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. Other television roles include her recurring role as Gertrude Moon in the NBC sitcom Frasier (2000–04) and Joan Margaret in Grace & Frankie (2017–2022).
Ann Lee Doran was an American character actress, possibly best known as Carol Stark, the mother of James "Jim" Stark in Rebel Without a Cause (1955). She was an early member of the Screen Actors Guild and served on the board of the Motion Picture & Television Fund for 30 years.
The Cruel Sea is a 1953 British war film based on the best-selling 1951 novel of the same name by former naval officer Nicholas Monsarrat, though the screenplay by Eric Ambler omits some of the novel's grimmest moments. The film stars Jack Hawkins, Donald Sinden, Denholm Elliott, Stanley Baker, Liam Redmond, Virginia McKenna and Moira Lister. The movie was made by Ealing Studios seven years after the end of World War II, and was directed by Charles Frend and produced by Leslie Norman.
A Room with a View is a 1985 British romance film directed by James Ivory and produced by Ismail Merchant. It is written by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, who adapted E. M. Forster's 1908 novel A Room with a View. Set in England and Italy, it is about a young woman named Lucy Honeychurch in the final throes of the restrictive and repressed culture of Edwardian England and her developing love for a free-spirited young man, George Emerson. Maggie Smith, Denholm Elliott, Daniel Day-Lewis, Judi Dench and Simon Callow feature in supporting roles. The film closely follows the novel by the use of chapter titles to distinguish thematic segments.
The House That Dripped Blood is a 1971 British anthology horror film directed by Peter Duffell and made by Amicus Productions. It stars Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Nyree Dawn Porter, Denholm Elliott, and Jon Pertwee. The film is a collection of four short stories concerning a series of inhabitants of the eponymous building. All of the stories were originally written, and subsequently scripted, by Robert Bloch.
A Kind of Loving is a 1962 British kitchen sink drama film directed by John Schlesinger, starring Alan Bates and June Ritchie. It is based on the 1960 novel of the same name by Stan Barstow which was later adapted into the 1982 television series A Kind of Loving. The film tells the story of two lovers in early 1960s Lancashire. It belongs to the British New Wave movement.
A Private Function is a 1984 British comedy film starring Michael Palin and Maggie Smith. The film was predominantly filmed in Ilkley, and Ben Rhydding in West Yorkshire. The film was also screened in the section of Un Certain Regard at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival.
Defence of the Realm is a 1986 British political thriller film directed by David Drury, starring Gabriel Byrne, Greta Scacchi, and Denholm Elliott, with Robbie Coltrane in a supporting role.
Percy's Progress is a 1974 British comedy film directed by Ralph Thomas and starring Leigh Lawson, Elke Sommer, Denholm Elliott, Judy Geeson and Harry H. Corbett. It was written by Sid Colin, Harry H. Corbett and Ian La Frenais. The film is a sequel to Percy (1971).
Seven Days to Noon is a 1950 British political thriller film. It was directed by John and Roy Boulting and it starred Barry Jones.
Hearts Divided is a 1936 American musical film about the real-life marriage between American Elizabeth 'Betsy' Patterson and Jérôme Bonaparte, brother of Napoleon. It stars Marion Davies and Dick Powell as the couple. The film was a remake of the 1928 silent film Glorious Betsy, which was in turn based on the play Glorious Betsy by Rida Johnson Young. In real life, they were married in Baltimore, before sailing for Europe. Napoleon annulled the marriage, in spite of the existence of a child, and forced Jerome to marry Catharina of Württemberg, making him king of Westphalia. “Luckily, Hollywood treats the lovers Betsy and Jerome with a little more compassion. The couple is even granted a second chance at happiness by Claude Rains' Napoleon.”
Clive Stanley Donner was a British film director who was part of the British New Wave, directing films such as The Caretaker, Nothing but the Best, What's New Pussycat?, and Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush. He also directed television movies and commercials through the mid-1990s.
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