Ronald Searle had been regaling the British public with his cartoons about the rowdy, larcenous girls of St. Trinian’s School for Young Ladies for more than a decade when writer-director Frank Launder, working with his partner Sidney Gilliat, used them as inspiration for this 1954 film, an anarchic farce so successful that it spawned three sequels between 1957 and 1966, an unsuccessful reboot in1980, and the second reboot in 2007, which led to yet another sequel in 2009.
Presented here in a digitally restored transfer, Belles is undoubtedly the best of the lot, especially because it preserves two performances by the incomparable Alastair Sim. He plays both Millicent Fritton, the headmistress trying to keep the highly unorthodox school out of the hands of creditors, and her twin brother Clarance, a smooth-talking bookie.
The ramshackle plot concocted by Launder and Gilliat revolves around a horse race in which Arab Boy, owned by the Sultan of Makyad, will run. Since the Sultan has enrolled his daughter Fatima at St.Trinian’s, Clarence enrolls his daughter Arabella (Vivienne Martin) as well, with instructions to befriend Fatima and gather information on her father’s horse. When the girls learn that Arab Boy is likely to win the race, Miss Fritton finds out and decides to wager the school’s entire bank account on the horse. Clarence, however, is backing a different nag, and through a complicated series of double-crosses, Arab Boy is horse-napped and brought to the campus, horrifying Miss Fritton, who has staked the school’s future on the race.
As if all this were not enough, gangly policewoman Ruby Gates (Joyce Grenfell) has gone undercover as the new games mistress at St. Trinian’s to help shut down a crime ring centered at the school which, among other things, manufactures gin in the chemistry lab for distribution by the shady Flash Harry (George Cole) to the surrounding community.
Everything culminates on Parents’ Day when a melee occurs as those who have bet on Arab Boy resort to extreme measures to get him to the race on time while others try to prevent his removal. Subplots add to the zany, frenetic mix: education ministry inspectors are regularly seduced by the beautiful older girls and added to the teaching staff; a field hockey match turns into a free-for-all, and the school’s sports trophies disappear at the flick of a light switch.
Nothing is subtle in The Belles of St. Trinian’s, but the flow of sight gags—not the least of them the appearance of Sim in drag—and goofy dialogue is ample, and it is hard to resist its wacky spell. Extras include interviews with three film historians, a fourth with Sim’s daughter, and a fifth with four women who played members of the school’s maniacal student body. Recommended.