Film Night Two - Just as we thought it was safe...

We put in what turns out to have been a "banker" film night on Tuesday as Arthur didn't think he could

The Smallest Show on Earth (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

make Friday this week but as it turned out he was free after all so...why not just have another film night?

Why not indeed but just to make this one a little different we had pizza, salad and garlic bread in place of the traditional pork pie.

There may be SPOILERS below

The programme was fairly traditional consisting as it did of black and white films of the 'fifties and 'sixties. First up was what I jokingly referred to as Britain's answer to Cinema Paradiso - "The Smallest Show on Earth"  from 1957. This continued the theme of Peter Sellers' films amongst other links to recent fare.

Bill Travers and wife (as of this same year) Virginia McKenna play a couple who inherit a run down old cinema called the Bijou and against their better judgement end up running it with the aid of a motley assortment of equally run down staff including Sellers as a drunken old projectionist. Amongst other British celluloid stalwarts of the era we also find Bernard Miles, Sid James, Margaret Rutherford, Liz Fraser and Leslie Phillips in the cast as the Spensers try to run the "Old By-joo" to raise its value to Francis de Wolff the owner of the big "modern" rival in the town.

The comedy character actors are the delight here, while the leads (better known later as the Adamsons of Born Free) have a bit of a thankless task playing against the likes of Rutherford and Sellers. It is also a nice bit of social history with its reminders of the cinemas of my childhood (which were happily mostly more like the Grand

Francis de Wolff (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

than the Bijou). Basil Dearden directed and it was produced by Michael Relph with the famous team of Launder and Gilliat as executive producers.

The short feature played in the interval and accompanied by the pizza, was again a Bilko episode, in which our hero spends the platoon's money on a racehorse with the expected disastrous results and some great comedy mugging from the long-suffering Paul Ford.

After the interval the second feature was a Boulting Brothers comedy from 1963: Heaven's Above featuring another low key (compared to his later Pink Panther work) character performance by Peter Sellers. This time as a prison chaplain mistakenly

Peter Sellers (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

given a parish and as a well-meaning vicar, causing mayhem and an almost complete social meltdown in the town.

The last part of the film justifies the title although it does feel a bit like a different film tacked on the end. Much fun to be had again from an assortment of character comedians of the time as well as Sellers' own role. Bernard Miles crops up again and Eric Sykes, Miriam Karlin and Roy Kinnear have key roles but playing who's who with all the well known faces thronging the screen from Derek Nimmo to Ian Carmichael.