The League of Gentlemen (film)

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The League Of Gentlemen
LeagueOfGentlemenPoster.jpg
British quad poster for the film
Directed by Basil Dearden
Screenplay by Bryan Forbes
Based on The League of Gentlemen
1958 novel
by John Boland
Produced by Michael Relph
Starring Jack Hawkins
Nigel Patrick
Roger Livesey
Bryan Forbes
Richard Attenborough
Cinematography Arthur Ibbetson
Edited by John D. Guthridge
Music by Philip Green
Production
company
Distributed by British Lion Films
Release date
  • 5 April 1960 (1960-04-05)
Running time
116 minutes
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
Budget£192,000 [1] or £179,602 [2]

The League of Gentlemen is a 1960 British heist action comedy film directed by Basil Dearden and starring Jack Hawkins, Nigel Patrick, Roger Livesey and Richard Attenborough. It is based on the 1958 novel The League of Gentlemen by John Boland and adapted by Bryan Forbes, who also starred in the film.

Contents

Plot

A manhole opens at night in an empty street and out climbs Lieutenant-Colonel Norman Hyde in a dinner suit. He gets into a Rolls-Royce and drives home. There, he prepares seven envelopes, each containing an American crime paperback called The Golden Fleece, halves of ten £5-notes and an unsigned invitation from “Co-operative Removals Limited” to lunch at the Cafe Royal.

The envelopes are sent to former army officers, each in desperate or humiliating circumstances. When they all turn up looking for the other halves of the £5-notes which are handed out, Hyde asks their opinion of the novel which is about a robbery. They show little enthusiasm but Hyde then reveals each person's misdemeanours.

Hyde has no criminal record but holds a grudge for being made redundant by the army after a long career. He intends to rob a bank using the team's skills, with equal shares of £100,000 or more for each man.

The gang meet under the guise of an amateur dramatic society rehearsing Journey’s End to discuss the plan before moving into Hyde’s house and living a military regimen of duties and fines for being out of line. Hyde knows that a million pounds in used notes is regularly delivered to a City of London bank and has details of the delivery.

They raid an army training camp in Dorset for arms and supplies. Hyde, Mycroft, Porthill and Race distract soldiers by posing as senior officers on an unscheduled food inspection. The others steal weapons while posing as telephone repairmen, speaking in Irish accents to divert suspicion to the IRA. Hyde has explained the reasoning behind this ruse by stating the one nationality to whom the British will never give the benefit of the doubt is the Irish.

The gang rent a warehouse to prepare. Race steals vehicles including cars and a lorry which are fitted with false number plates. They are disturbed by a passing policeman who offers to keep an eye on their premises as he patrols. In Hyde’s basement, the gang trains with maps and models. On the eve of the operation, Hyde destroys the plans and recalls his former military glory.

The robbery is bloodless and precise. Using smoke bombs, Sterling submachine guns, and radio jamming equipment, the gang raids the bank, near St Paul’s. The money is seized without serious injury and the robbers escape. At Hyde’s house, celebrations are interrupted by the unexpected arrival of Hyde’s old friend, Brigadier “Bunny” Warren, who drunkenly recalls the old days. One by one the members leave carrying suitcases filled with notes. Then the telephone rings; Hyde is told that police and soldiers surround the house.

Leading the police is Superintendent Wheatlock from whom Hyde learns the flaw in his plan. A small boy outside the bank had been collecting car registration (licence plate) numbers, a common hobby at the time. The police, discovering the number, found it had been noted by the policeman who visited the warehouse. The policeman had also noted the number of Hyde's own car. Thus a link was established between the robbery and Hyde.

Hyde is escorted to a police van in which the rest are "all present and correct", each having been captured as he left the house.

Cast

Production

Allied Film Makers was a short-lived production company founded by Dearden, actors Hawkins, Forbes and Attenborough, and producer Michael Relph. Forbes contributed many of the company's scripts. Dearden had previously directed The Blue Lamp (1950). [3]

The portrait of Hyde's wife (he comments "I regret to say the bitch is still going strong") is a close copy of a portrait of Deborah Kerr which was used in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) in which Roger Livesey (The League's "Padre" Mycroft) also starred.

Forbes points out in his commentary on the DVD that in most films of the time Hyde's wife would be described as dead and not dismissed in such a manner. A scene in the script following the dinner party has Hyde, followed by Race, visiting a teenage girl at school—her photo is also on his desk. It is implied that she is his daughter. A scene which did not make the film has Weaver the teetotaler reaching for the brandy after Hyde has left the dinner. Lexy reminds him he shouldn't but Weaver drinks anyway.

In the original script, Race addressed others as "old dear".

Cary Grant was offered the part of Hyde but turned it down. [4]

Queens Gate Place Mews, SW7, was used as the filming location for Edward Lexy's (Richard Attenborough's) garage. [5]

The magazines in Mycroft’s suitcase at the beginning of the film were borrowed from the set of Peeping Tom (1960) that was being filmed at the same time at Pinewood. [6]

The League of Gentlemen was mentioned in the film The Wrong Arm of the Law (1963) as one of the films that “Pearly Gates” (Peter Sellers) was going to show his gang of crooks as a part of his training programme.

Reception

Box office

The film was successful, being the sixth most popular movie at the UK box office in 1960. [7] By 1971, it had earned a profit of £250,000 [1] Over 20 years later, Bryan Forbes estimated the profit as between £300,000 and £400,000. [8]

Critical

The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote:

Given a slightly different approach, this film might have developed into an ironic study of the decline of the officer class in peacetime; a valid enough subject, especially when one considers the varying shifts in social status to be encountered in the post-war British scene. Instead, the film concentrates on suspense rather than character investigation. Each of the Gentlemen is introduced by a little establishing scene, after which the script fails to develop their idiosyncracies and, in fact, weakens its own possibilities by making them all basically shady characters. Bryan Forbes (as in his script for The Angry Silence (1960)) brings a lively surface edge to the dialogue, but tends to overdo the slick, ripe repartee as well as imposing on his characters a variety of fashionable perversions. As a study of a certain strata of society, then, the film lacks a strong centre and a firm point of view – one is never quite sure how seriously the parody of the officer code is intended, especially in the ambiguous, obligatorily moral ending. Judged as a thriller, it is more successful : the two big set-pieces (the army camp robbery and the raid itself) are quite skilfully put together, although the former suffers from an overdose of tired Army humour. The handling of these scenes and the extensive location shooting suggest that, for Basil Dearden, the film's interest (and challenge) was mainly a technical one. In any case, it is his sharpest, most alive film for several years with rather less of his customary, mechanical shockcutting. The players, on the other hand, are often forced by the script's limitations to fall back on familiar mannerisms – Jack Hawkins is altogether too smooth and heavy and Nigel Patrick's oily bounder brings no revelation. Roger Livesey has some dry moments as a spurious officer doing the rounds whilst Robert Coote's drunken intervention enlivens the somewhat anti-climactic climax. [9]

"Neatly written and expertly played," wrote The New York Times in its 1961 review, "a devilishly inventive and amusing screen play by Mr. Forbes...directed crisply and spinningly by Basil Dearden." [10]

The Daily Telegraph called it "a masterpiece of British cinema". [11]

Dennis Schwartz noted "a fine example of old-fashioned English humor: droll and civil." [12]

Time Out wrote: "A terrific caper movie ... with typically excellent character playing from a lovable set of old lags." [13]

Home media

The film was included, along with three other Dearden films, as part of the box set Basil Dearden’s London Underground by the Criterion Collection. [14]

In 2006, a restored version of the film was released as a special edition DVD in the UK. The extras include a South Bank Show documentary on Attenborough and a PDF version of Forbes' original script. An audio commentary for the film was provided by Forbes and his wife Nanette Newman who features in the film as Major Rutland-Smith's wife.

Cultural legacy

The book and film inspired both Alan Moore's comic series The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and its spin-off film as well as the British comedy troupe The League of Gentlemen .[ citation needed ]

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References

  1. 1 2 Alexander Walker, Hollywood, England, Stein and Day, 1974 p103
  2. ↑ Chapman, J. (2022). The Money Behind the Screen: A History of British Film Finance, 1945-1985. Edinburgh University Press p 360
  3. ↑ The Aurum Film Encyclopedia, edited by Phil Hardy, published in 1998
  4. ↑ "eyeforfilm.co.uk DVD review".
  5. ↑ Mews News. Lurot Brand. Published Spring 2010. Retrieved 19 September 2013.
  6. ↑ "The League of Gentlemen". Pamela Green. 12 November 2018.
  7. ↑ Billings, Josh (15 December 1960). "It's Britain 1, 2, 3 again in the 1960 box office stakes". Kine Weekly. p. 8-9.
  8. ↑ Brian McFarlane, An Autobiography of British Cinema, Metheun 1997 p193
  9. ↑ "The League of Gentlemen". The Monthly Film Bulletin . 27 (312): 65. 1 January 1960 – via ProQuest.
  10. ↑ Crowther, Bosley (25 January 1961). "Screen: Comical Crooks:'League of Gentlemen,' From Britain, Opens". The New York Times– via NYTimes.com.
  11. ↑ "The League of Gentlemen: a masterpiece of British cinema". The Telegraph. 14 December 2015 – via www.telegraph.co.uk.
  12. ↑ "The League of Gentlemen (1959)" – via www.rottentomatoes.com.
  13. ↑ "The League of Gentlemen". Time Out London.
  14. ↑ "The League of Gentlemen". The Criterion Collection.
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