Füge eine Handlung in deiner Sprache hinzuAlbert Steptoe and his son Harold are junk dealers. Harold meets a stripper, marries her and takes her home. Albert, of course, is furious and tries every trick he knows to drive the new bri... Alles lesenAlbert Steptoe and his son Harold are junk dealers. Harold meets a stripper, marries her and takes her home. Albert, of course, is furious and tries every trick he knows to drive the new bride from his household.Albert Steptoe and his son Harold are junk dealers. Harold meets a stripper, marries her and takes her home. Albert, of course, is furious and tries every trick he knows to drive the new bride from his household.
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- Arthur
- (as Perri St. Claire)
- Hotel Manager
- (as Michael da Costa)
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The TV episodes being barely thirty minutes long the stories, are necessarily structured to fit the time slot.
Unlike what may be considered more typical comedy sitcoms, these are formed more in the manner of short plays. The shows writers deliberately wanted that to be the case, they didn't want comics for the principal characters. No they wanted actors, who were used to that form of discipline. And were more than capable of handling a wider range, of emotions than in a straightforward sitcom.
All of this is relevant to the characters dynamics of father and son, in the intensely claustrophobic environs of their home and work environment.
I really cannot imagine any comic managing to handle more than one emotion at a time, especially not consecutively.
I watched all of the shows both monochrome and the latter colour ones, it was a comedic staple of my evening TV entertainment.
Part of what has always appealed to me is the natural dynamic friction, between Albert and Harold.
I enjoy watching both TV show and films however many times that is, and for a long time simply lapped up the comedy.
It took me quite a while before I finally started thinking, about the characters in rather more detail.
The more I did the less the comedy sufficed or more accurately was viewed, from a slightly different perspective.
I came to actually see the characters through my own eyes from where I was in my own life, resenting the dad and bemoaning what a pillock the son was.
Reading other reviews I see people bemoaning the film because its drearier than the TV show, that can easily be understood and explained.
That's only because the movie's longer timeframe allows, for greater character development. And they are seen through a wider prism, of the world around them.
However, this is a film that feels very different to the good-natured and light-hearted TV show. There's a cold, almost ruthless streak of pessimism in the production that makes this feel more like a tragedy than a comedy. In some ways it feels like an episode drawn out to feature length and the single-strand plot makes some elements of the production feel drawn out and repetitive.
In essence the tale is about Corbett falling for a stripper and deciding to marry her, only for the needy Brambell to get in the way. Carolyn Seymour successfully portrays the awkwardness felt at coming between this pairing. There's little more to it than that, but at times this film feels like a depiction of psychological and emotional torture, with Brambell turning the thumb screws at every opportunity. It's testament to the skill of the two stars that this remains a likable comedy despite the darkness of the script. Inevitably, the grimy surroundings are better realised than ever on film as opposed to television, and the envelope is pushed further than ever with nudity and bad language in the mix.
The grit and seediness of the Steptoe's environment transfers very well to film and we get a valuable glimpse of a part of London which was grey, dilapidated and depressing...something we are never privy to in the TV series. With film censorship being slightly more relaxed than what could be seen or heard on television we get some hilarious outbursts from Harold and Albert, liberally peppered with swear words.
Of course the TV version of Steptoe is a sit-com and while this is funny in places the genuine tragedy of Harold and Albert's situation takes centre stage. Harold ends up getting hitched to a stripper but the match is doomed from the start due to his mixed feelings: all he wants to do is get away from his father and make something of himself yet abandoning him is the one thing he cannot do. We really do sympathise with Harold's plight in this movie and despise Albert's deviousness and thwarting him at every turn.
Of course, such sombre elements existed in the TV programme but due to them being mixed with relatively rapid comedy in 25 minute slots we accepted the character's situation without dwelling on it too much. This time round, with a longer running time and the tragi-drama fleshed out it sometimes makes for uncomfortable viewing.
All the leads perform well and this is a better example of how TV sit-coms could work as cinema spectaculars. Indeed, even if the characters weren't known from TV this has the potential to function well as a stand-alone movie.
See it and be pleasantly surprised.
This first feature length film has the basic traits of the show, the tragi-comedy aspects of a son (Harry H. Corbett) forever destined to be held back by his lecherous and unclean father (Wilfrid Brambell) are fully born out. All set to the very basic working class backdrop of a Rag & Bone family business.
Enter a stripper, excuse me, exotic dancer (Carolyn Seymour), who bizarrely marries Corbett and cues up a number of scenes where old man Steptoe single handedly manages to destroy the marriage on the honeymoon.
It's not the coarseness of the screenplay that hurts the movie, or some of the dialogue that has the PC brigade spitting feathers, it's that in spite of sound performances and some well written sequences (Galton & Simpson), it's just too bleak for its own good!
The gags quickly dry up entering the second half of the picture, which leaves us with only our good will to stay with characters that we have a mild interest in anyway. For hard core fans of the show, it's easy to go with the flow, but there's nothing here to remotely entice the outsider to venture further into the hygienically challenge world of Steptoe & Son. 6/10
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- WissenswertesTo receive an 'A' (PG) cinema certificate some brief nudity was removed from the striptease scene. DVD releases are fully uncut.
- PatzerThe horse faeces that Harold picks up and puts in the bucket at the beginning of the film are clearly little potatoes painted brown.
- Zitate
Harold Kitchener Steptoe: [To Albert] You're worse than a fly 'round a cow's arsehole.
- Crazy CreditsAt the start of the film, the camera zooms out from a parking meter and shows the lettering "Steptoe & Son" on the side of the cart parked in front, with "Ray Galton & Alan Simpson's" above the cart as normal captions & Copyright information below the cart.
- VerbindungenFeatured in Comedy Classics: Porridge (2022)
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Details
- Erscheinungsdatum
- Herkunftsland
- Sprache
- Auch bekannt als
- Steptoe & Son
- Drehorte
- Trellick Tower, 7 Golborne Road, London, England, Vereinigtes Königreich(Harold approaches a tower block)
- Produktionsfirma
- Weitere beteiligte Unternehmen bei IMDbPro anzeigen
- Laufzeit1 Stunde 38 Minuten
- Sound-Mix
- Seitenverhältnis
- 1.85 : 1