The Great McGonagall

This is an update on my June 2003 comments which I had I posted based on my recollections of the videotape that I'd hired in the early 80's - but which I hadn't seen anywhere since.

So I was surprised to see the DVD listed for release in Australia in October (2004) and immediately ordered a copy. The text on the back of the DVD continues to mislead the viewer by referring to the film as "a high camp farce" and "cult British spoof". However it's clear after finding out more from the internet about McGonagall that the film is all based on the poet's autobiography - most of the circumstances are the same, they're just presented in a slightly absurd manner (but not much more absurd than the poetry itself). The poetry in the film is definitely the original McGonagall.

It's still a very funny film, and even before I found out that McGonagall was a real poet I appreciated the tragedy and pathos of the character. I think it was Spike Milligan who said that someone, or something, suffers in every joke that's ever been funny.

The DVD quality is very good considering the low price - so I'm hoping that Spike Milligan's "The Bed Sitting Room" can be made available too. Spike Milligan and William McGonagall had a lot in common in regard to their ability to make people laugh - but that was exactly the reaction Spike wanted, whereas William struggled to be taken seriously as a dramatic performance poet.

Interesting in an history of British comedy sense. It has a Goon Show cast does Monty Python skit feel. Unfortunately, it takes a concept that would have been appropriate for a five minute skit and stretches it out an additional hour and a half. A fine supporting performance by Peter Sellers and sporadic gratuitous female nudity (while appreciated) are insufficient to save this from being an albeit quirky and unique but simultaneously mediocre and repetitive low budget comedy.

As an aside, the video copy of this film that I purchased features a full cover picture of Peter Sellers and in the short synopsis on the reverse states that Sellers stars as The Great McGonagall. For the benefit of those of you who have yet to see the film, this is entirely incorrect. Peter Sellers plays the relatively small roll of Queen Victoria and Spike Milligan stars as McGonagall.

McGonagall is presented as a believably bad poet - someone you could expect to outsell all other Scottish poets combined, simply because his work is so mind-bogglingly banal.

This is an extremely charming, outrageously funny and also tragic film. There is no doubt that some will not be able to tolerate the amount of pathos generated by a good and simple man (like Nathan in Steve Martin's "The Jerk") who just wanted to follow his heart and do his best in life.

McGonagall puts all his heart and soul into his renditions (each one beginning with blood-curdling moan) and yet he is mercilessly scoffed at by the cognoscenti.

McGonagall's fictional poems will haunt you for life, and you'll never be able to see a simple object like a cow or a bridge without being tempted to burst into a long "Ooooooooooooooh!". Peter Sellers also makes a charming brief appearance as Queen Victoria.

This is the film that "Wind From the East" so desperately wanted to be. Deconstructs itself before your very eyes. Hilarious and mystifying. Spike Milligan and Joe McGrath were made for each other. And Peter Sellers is on board too. I find it hard to believe this classic of the Cinema of the Absurd is so little known. But then so is McGrath -- the Edgar G. Ulmer of British comedy. While Richard Lester is more associated with "The Goon Shpw" -- thanks to "The Running Jumping and Standing Still Film," it's McGrath who conveys the true Goonish sense of intellectual lunacy. The fact that the entire film is shot inside of a theater -- used to suggest the whole world -- is especially novel and fascinating.

There is a classic volume edited by Wyndham Lewis and another entitled "The Stuffed Owl: An Anthology of Bad Verse". The book illustrated the worst poets and poetry (in the opinion of the editors) in modern English literature (Shakespeare and his contemporaries, and Medieval masters like Chaucer, were not included). Incredibly the editors not only included poets who were deservedly forgotten (the bland and self-satisfied Martin Tupper, or Edward Foote, who footnoted his poems to verify what he meant, or Poet Laureates like Alfred Austin) some of the great poets slipped too. Wordsworth, Poe, Byron, Tennyson, Longfellow (for "Excelcior") were in the book. I recommend it for people who want to enjoy the pratfalls of poesy (which can be very odd indeed).

Oddly enough William MacGonigal is not included in the collection. Yet he is generally chosen as the example of the worst poet of Victorian Britain. He was the only one who never realized it. He was a dreamer - one day he was in bed and suddenly realized he wanted to be a poet...a great poet. He then proceeded to write poetry, and would do so until he died. There was absolutely nothing anyone of his serious contemporaries ever saw in his work to grant it merit. He certainly was not in the same category of Tennyson or Wordsworth or Byron (despite their occasional lapses). Yet he actually tried to become poet laureate. Given that (after Tennyson died in 1892) Alfred Austin finally got chosen (Wilde, Kipling, and William Morris were not considered politically correct enough for different reasons - Austin was a good Tory policy propagandist), MacGonigal could have served that political occasion job. He would have enjoyed it.

Today, actually, his poetry sells well (some say it sells better than Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, or Robert Browning). It has a beguiling beat, likened to calypso in rhythm. His fairly simple line of English vocabulary is quick to grasp among people struggling to learn our language. And (unlike Tennyson and most of the others) a movie was made about his life. Spike Milligan finally got the lead role in his career (remember "Postman's Knock" - I suppose not) that was worth remembering. Sellers was given an interesting cameo as Queen Victoria. Not a great film, but an interesting one.