Cinema
The Belles of St Trinian's
Frank Launder · 1954
Synopsis
A sultan enrols his daughter at St Trinian's, a girls' boarding school, because his racehorses are training in the same county. The first day of term: the pupils arrive by train, the shopkeepers of the town close their shutters and the village constable locks himself in his own cell. The school is riddled with debts and its trophies are in pawn. The headmistress, Miss Fritton, explains that other schools send girls unprepared into a ruthless world, whereas from here it is the world that must come out prepared.
Context
The drawings on which the film is based had first appeared in October 1941 in a humorous magazine. Their author, Ronald Searle, already in uniform, was sent to Singapore and spent the rest of the war as a prisoner of the Japanese; the schoolgirls he drew on his return are much darker than those of before. Two ministry inspectors feature among them, and the chemistry class distils gin. Alastair Sim plays two roles, the headmistress and her brother Clarence, a bookmaker, who has his daughter re-enrolled. Searle's drawings open and close the film.
Who it is for
Ninety-one minutes, in English and in black and white; the first of the films drawn from the series of drawings.
Prizes and reception
The first of a series that three sequels carried on until 1966, and that a fourth took up again in 1980.
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