Day 30: Film with Great Joy (part ii)
And my last post for the challenge is my second choice for a ‘Film with
Great Joy,’ and that’s “The Sandwich Man” (1966) That same Christmas it came
out, Variety called it a ‘documentary in drag,’ and the trailer promises a
laugh, ‘a crazy cracking dizzy darling of a film’ - "Sandwich Man” is all
of these, not quite these at all, and something delightful in between. Written
by Michael Bentine (Peruvian Briton, of the Goons!) and director Robert
Hartford-Davis, it follows the delightfully/deceptively simple premise of
following a very pleasant, very polite sandwich (advertisement board) man on
his walk about contemporary/Swinging Sixties London, with only loosely tied
plot lines bringing together sketches, some forgettable but most memorably
hilarious. Promoting a men's tailors (with ‘Never Mind the Quality’ sorts of
names), Horace Quilby (the very charming Bentine) happily wanders the city in
his terribly smart top hat and tails, taking in the sights and sounds for an
honest day’s pay, while waiting for his racing pigeon Esmeralda to come home,
accompanied by a delightfully star-studded cast (including a shining list of
beloved character actors if you’re into that sort of thing, which I am). It is
also a non-judging, loving portrait of a bustling, changing, vibrant, multicultural
city, one of my favourite cameos among many featuring Hugo Fulcher and Leon
Thau as the rhythm section of ‘The Sikhers’ (...really, haha) trying to get on
the bus and a magnificent if brief appearance of Earl Cameron (one of the first
black actors to break the UK’s ‘colour bar’) as the conductor. A nice bit of
joyful dramatic brassy rock and Bentine's smiling, child-like witness pulls it
all together to really become a ‘ dizzy darling of a film’ Thank you all for a
fun month of posts! I really hope I can keep this up :’) Xo
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