The Belles of St. Trinian's
Joyce Grenfell and Alastair Sim Star in the Anti-School-Story Comedy
Based on the drawings by Ronald Searle, "The Belles of St. Trinians" shows a girls' boarding school overrun with gambling, intrigue and home-brewed Gin.
The Belles of St. Trinian’s was the first, and arguably the best, of a series of films inspired by Ronald Searle’s cartoons of the anarchic girls’ boarding school. Driven to distraction by the school’s reign of terror over the surrounding area, the police and education board send a young policewoman into St. Trinian’s to work for them undercover.
Plots at St. Trinian’s
She discovers a comedy Gothic institution, where the staff are existing on hope and post-dated paycheques, the girls’ idea of science lessons is manufacturing TNT and bathtub gin, and hearty practical jokes involve tripwires and battleaxes. Meantime, the new arrival Princess Fatima, whose father owns a horse running in the Derby, is attracting a lot of interest from betting syndicates in both the fourth form and the sixth form. Their opposing attempts to secure or to hobble the horse’s chances of winning provide a basis for the film’s plot.
Comedy Style
The Belles of S. Trinians rests on a series of assumptions: that schoolgirls are all either feral knee-high guerrillas or ennui-ridden chain-smoking temptresses, that the establishment will always be beaten by chancers and black-marketeers, and that “dame” roles offer a rich vein of human comedy. A lot of viewers may find the film old-fashioned, sexist, or simply unfunny. Some may agree with critics like Ju Gosling that such films are made because their makers find the concept of educating women amusing, and are threatened by the idea of strong females. To be fair, though, The Belles of St. Trinian’s is a long way from the sniggering witless Carry On vehicles which the St. Trinian’s series eventually became. It is well-played, inventive and has an infectious energy which carries the audience along with the girls as they pursue their various and nefarious schemes.
Casting
Alastair Sim is superb in a double role, playing both the disreputable bookmaker Clarence Fritton, and his sister Millicent Fritton, headmistress of the school. Relying more on competent acting and amusing voices to distinguish the roles than on trick photography, Sim injects an engaging degree of sheer silliness into the film through both parts. George Cole is entertainingly shifty as the girls’ pet spiv Flash Harry, and Joyce Grenfell excels as the hearty but naive undercover policewoman Ruby Gates. There’s a even a minor role for Sid James as another bookmaker working with Clarence. It’s not Malory Towers, or Trebizon, but St. Trinian’s has a deranged charm of its own in this sporting attempt to capture the spirit of Ronald Searle’s drawings.
