And Now for Something Completely Different (1971)

 "My hovercraft is full of eels."

This film is, of course, just a load of sketches from the first two series of Monty Python's Flying Circus, barely rewritten at all and reshot with a slightly bigger budget. That, of course, is no bad concept for a film.

Whether the "best" sketches were chosen is, of course, a subjective thing. Any thirteen episode series of half hour shows is going to be, as the cliche goes, hit and miss. There's so much good stuff in those two series, and the film has less than ninety minutes to play with, so it's a shame they went for the killer joke sketch, the rowdy old ladies, and other second tier stuff. I suppose they were pretty much obliged to include the slightly overrated parrot sketch. Nevertheless, we get the two mountaineering sketches, not being seen, the restaurant sketch, defence against fresh fruit, and other top tier stuff/.

Obviously, the film is superb. It couldn't possibly not have been. But what fascinates me, after the passage of fifty-odd years, is how much longer ago 1971 feels than it did the last time I saw this film, I suspect when John Major was prime minister. We no longer, mercifully, have many tobacconists. Let us just say that attitudes to LGBT+ people are a bit different. Even more fascinating, though, old people wear Victorian fashions because they are, of course, Victorians. It's middle aged women who look like my generation's idea of what old people look like. And there are the ever-present city gents with their black bowler hats.

This is a hilarious comedy, and also a fascinating little time capsule.

Brazil (1985)

"I won't look at your willy."

This film is, of course, a work of genius from the unique mind of Terry Gilliam- Kafkaesque, nightmarish, surreal, perhaps similar in visual style to his recently directed Crimson Assurance bit of Monty Python’s Meaning of Life, but announcing Gilliam as a true auteur. It’s also a true cinematic classic, managing to present a fundamentally bleak view of civilisation with the darkly humorous approach that is of course the only sane one.

Gilliam may be a native of Minnesota, but this film is full of the influences of his twenty years in Britain. It is, obviously, full of that Orwellian fear of tyranny, and the petty details of that tyranny, that is constantly found in British science fiction. It is set in a deliberately timeless and anachronistic time and place, but there are plenty of visual nods to the Nazi’s, and in particular to the phenomenon, in the words of Hannah Arendt, of the banality of evil.

It’s very Pythonesque, of course, but should certainly not be reduced to that. The casting of Michael Palin against type is a masterstroke, as is the starring role for the excellent Jonathan Pryce. A parade of British character actors play a parade of entertainingly disturbing grotesques, as does Robert De Niro, whose insane casting somehow works.

It is, of course, obstructive to see a film about the reality of, well, fascism, in 2020. The Kafkaesque evils inherent in computers are shown here, as well as the effectiveness of information control by those in power. Where the only news is Fox News, truth no longer exists. And, while the UK is not yet at risk of fascism or anything close, the blatant cronyism and disrespect for constitution norms we see here are particularly chilling.

A superb film from a director who, with this film, has well and truly outgrown Monty Python.

A Fish Called Wanda (1988)

"Touch his dick and he's dead!"

I first saw this magnificent farce back when I hired out the video, which shows you how long ago it was. It not only stars but is written by John Cleese, and the figure behind Fawlty Towers certainly knows how to do a good farce.

Cleese is bloody good as Archie, of course, the (ahem) archetype of repressed, sexually stultified exemplar of a certain type of public school educated Englishman. Jamie Lee Curtis is also bloody good as the cynically feminine and deeply greedy Wanda with her foreign languages fetish. But truly outstanding are Kevin Kline as the psychopathic Otto and Michael Palin as the stuttering Ken, an extraordinary performance. All four give splendid comedy performances.

There are some laugh out loud moments-  I loved Archie’s apology to Otto- but it’s largely an intricate and character based farce, perfectly constructed. I’m not a fan of the farce in general but John Cleese is a master of the art.

Archie’s speech to Wanda about the stultifying embarrassment of being English is both funny and true, up to a point. I tend to think the stiff upper lip stereotype applies only to the public school educated, separated from their parents and put into a strange and repressed existence that I know mainly from popular culture; the English are fundamentally open, emotional, beer swilling north Europeans quite culturally close to the Scandinavians, Germans and Dutch, but something about that sense of very English embarrassment has permeated throughout our culture. Perhaps the upcoming horrors of Brexit will change that. Perhaps they won’t.

Be that as it may, this is a true comedy classic, and possibly the last creation of John Cleese to have true greatness.

Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life (1983)

“Let the heathens spill theirs
 On the dusty ground
 God shall make them pay for
 Each sperm that can’t be found.”

There’s a sketch on That Mitchell and Webb Look which shows our two eponymous writer-performers sorting out the order of sketches for their comedy sketch series, which is of course very much in the lineage of Monty Python. The joke is, of course, that they try to arrange the hits and the misses in the correct sequence so there are equal amounts of each, as every sketch show has to be hit and miss; it’s a fully fledged cliche. And one often made of this film.

Thing is, though, this criticism is somewhat dodgy. Of course the Monty Python telly series could be hit and miss; they had to fill thirteen episodes a series at the pace of telly, where union rules meant the studio lights went off at 10pm no matter what. But it’s commonly a criticism not made of The Holy Grail or The Life of Brian, both more narrative and less explicitly a series of sketches. Yet The Meaning of Life gets these criticisms full force.

But this is absolute pants. Yes, this film isn’t quite as good as the other two; I accept that. But how many individual telly episodes have this kind of hit rate? I mean, Every Sperm Is Sacred, sex education, a run of excellent war sketches, the Galaxy Song- this would have been a critical hit if it were the only Python film.

It’s also a lot more explicitly political, a sort of last hurrah for the Beyond the Fringe generation, as it gleefully skewers the church, public school, the armed forces and all sorts of upper middle class pretensions. Even Terry Gilliam’s glorious opening feature with its accountants raiding international finance on the high seas, a live action version of one of his own animations, is aimed squarely at Thatcherism. But more than that, it’s hilarious. And so is the film as a whole. So forget all this hit and miss stuff; this is classic, superb Python for the very last time.

The Death of Stalin (2017)

"I’m sorry you heard that, but he is a camel cock.”

This is my first opportunity in this blog to praise the great Armando Iannucci. I have, of course, seen all of The Thick of It, Alan Partridge and The Day Today, as well as some more obscure and older stuff. I am, it’s fair to say, quite the fanboy. And this film is in Iannucci‘s usual improvisational style and is rather good. So don’t expect a hatchet job.

It’s all historically accurate barring the odd bit of artistic licence- in reality Beria was executed a full six months after his downfall- and the inspired decision to ban cod Russian accents helps the film enormously. The cast is superb, with Steve Buscemi perfect as Khrushchev and Simon Russell Beale utterly evil as the loathsome Lavrentiy Beria. But it’s Michael Palin’s Molotov who steals the show, in a perfect bit of casting, as the fogeyish but utterly fanatical Vyacheslav Molotov, whose loyalty extends to believing his arrrsted wife must indeed be a traitor.

We begin with clear demonstrations of the evil of the regime, with one of Stalin’s “lists” being enacted as another load of random people are “disappeared” into Beria’s torture chambers, where he enjoys himself far too much for comfort. He’s an utterly repulsive and dangerous human being, yet it’s creepy that his downfall is in the end because of trumped up treason charges, with his very real history of extreme murder, torture and paedophilia a mere afterthought.

What disturbs, yet rings very true, is the sheer laddishness of the committee as a whole. They all plot for power, yes. They’ve all done terrible things for the party. But they’re nevertheless (the humourless Malenkov excepted) a bunch of immature “lads”. And yet there’s a fanatical groupthink here that is a scary ondictment of unchecked power with many lessons for us today. A superb film.

Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979)

"He wanks as high as any man in Wome!"

This is, surely, the greatest comedy film ever made. By miles. I suspect that’s an uncontroversial comment. It’s also not at all about religion. That one needs a bit more explaining.

Life of Brian is about how ideas, such as Jesus’ rather excellent views on how to live one’s life, are always taken over and twisted into something else by those who want to use them to gain power and status. Hence the central part of the film, where Brian is followed by professional disciples (“I should know- I’ve followed a few”) who argue amongst themselves and split into various denominations over a dropped shoe on day one, killing their first heretic for good measure. The main example of the film’s central message is in that context. But it isn’t only applied to religion- aren’t Reg’s People’s Front of Judea and all the other “splitters” am example of exactly the same thing? Yet again, principles are subordinated to power, status and meaningless bureaucracy, exactly the same as per every organised religion that has ever existed. That’s how humanity always twists religion but also, I’m afraid, politics. Principles don’t stand a chance. That’s the film’s message, beneath the inspired humour. It’s very bleak, very Adam Curtis, and every bit as dark as the gleefully dark humour.

It’s bloody funny, though. We all have our favourite lines; mine is when Brian convinced the crowd that “we’re all individuals” and “we’re all different”, and one bloke shouts “I’m not”. The performances are superb, the Pythons being geniuses, and the script is the best comedy script ever. The filming in Tunisia looks lush and expensive- thank you, George Harrison, for paying for such things as this and Shirley Bloody Bassey. If you haven’t seen this then just bloody watch it now.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)

"Your mother was a hamster and your father smells of elderberries!"

I'm obviously not blogging the telly series; it’s brilliant and revolutionary, of course, and any kind of “best of” will always be hilarious, but a sketch show with thirteen episodes to fill will inevitably be, to use the hackneyed phrase, hit and miss. And it’s not an appetising thought to attempt to review individual episodes of a series that is, deliberately, rather stream-of-consciousness. But I’ll have a go at the films. And yes, I know And Now For Something Completely Different is technically the first Python film, but I think we’re safe to treat that as a stand-alone compilation.

So, what of the film? Well, it's utterly hilarious, obviously, a serious contender for funniest film ever made. The Python style and humour translates perfectly to the big screen, in spite of the obviously low budget. The great locations and bloody good direction by Terry Jones (not Terry Gilliam, but they didn't know at the time that he would go on to be a big Hollywood director) really help here.

It's interesting to see, though, how coherent the sketches more or less are as a longer narrative, the perfect fruition of what Michael Palin and Terry Jones were trying to do increasingly during that final, truncated series. But the many iconic scenes, which we all know so well, are an absolute triumph. Forget the gleefully dodgy history; this is comedy gold. Even Elvis thought so.

Jabberwocky (1977)

“Rat on a stick!"

 This is a very funny film, make no mistake about that. But it's also an interestingly placed one- Terry Gilliam's first non-Python film, or not, depending on your point of view, and moreover its use of so many well-known character actors in a comedy echoes Ripping Yarns. It can't really be seen in isolation, especially not if one happens to be a massive Monty Python geek.

All of which is to say that it's all very Python in its humour, and in a good way; this is no Yellowbeard. And it's wonderful to see the likes of John Le Mesurier and Harry H. Corbett getting to work with this kind of material. It’s also a treasure trove for the actor spotter, with a young Annette Badland as Griselda and a huge number of cameos.

But Michael Palin, as always, puts in a superb comic performance as our innocent and gloriously boring hero, a cooper’s apprentice turned hero who should have been a management consultant. Max Wall and John Le Mesurier are also superb, but it all hangs upon the brilliant Palin, whose working relationship with his fellow Python Terry Gilliam would of course go on to further great things. And it’s fascinating to see this as Gilliam’s first solo directorial credit for a full length film.

Python-connected films are always worth watching. But few are as brilliant as this one.

Time Bandits (1981)

"Four foot one! That is a long time, isn't it?"

This isn't really all that brilliant a film, in spite of some splendid individual bits of comedy, but it's a fascinating record of Terry Gilliam at this point in his career, with stylistic signs of his later directorial career yet with one foot very much still in Python- the film just feels very Monty Python, not surprisingly as Gilliam co-wrote it with Michael Palin, and both Palin and John Cleese get some splendid cameos: I love Cleese's version of Robin Hood as Prince Charles. And, as with the Python films, the owner of Handmade Films, one George Harrison, is involved, in this case providing a rather good song.

Also brilliant are Ian Holm's height- obsessed Napoleon and Sean Connery's noble and charismatic Agamemnon, complete with the Caledonian tones which were, I'm sure, de rigeur in ancient Mycenae. David Warner is, as ever, a magnificent baddie and the great Ralph Richardson is, literally, God, although he phoned in his performance somewhat.

The whole concept of a portal in young Kevin's bedroom, a portal into other realities that does not abide by the laws of science, is so very reminiscent of British children's fiction, from Alice to Narnia. The dwarves, put in charge of shrubbery by the Supreme Being, remind me a bit of Slartibartfast from the then-recent Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, while also providing a good employment agency for dwarf actors.

It's not as good as I remembered; individual scenes are good but as a whole it drags a bit. Still, it's a fascinating film to look back on.