Fiamme di passione

Director Carol Reed's most famous creation is Il terzo uomo (1949). Made just over a decade earlier, Bank Holiday (1938) is set on the other side of the Second World War, and the difference in the atmosphere of the two films is stark.

Bank Holiday takes place in August, as Londoners hurry to the seaside to enjoy a long weekend. The gallery of characters includes a young nurse (played by Margaret Lockwood), her lover (Hugh Williams), a family of five - with the mother (Kathleen Harrison) fashioning outré outfits and the father (Wally Patch) taking every opportunity to disappear into a pub - and a duo of girlfriends (Rene Ray and Merle Tottenham), travelling to attend a beauty pageant. Although she is supposed to be enjoying a romantic get-away in the fictional town of Bexborough (that part is acted out by Brighton), Lockwood's Catharine is preoccupied with the thoughts of a patient's husband (John Lodge) and the tragic case she left behind.

In its delivery, Bank Holiday is light-handed, playful, and non-judgemental. Characters frequently side-step expectations and norms, be it a misguided attempt to appear cosmopolitan, an extramarital affair, or theft. Yet, every single person is given space to become human, sympathetic, and complex; whether one is trustworthy is never truly called into question, and the police sergeant (brilliantly, memorably played by Wilfrid Lawson) will happily take a criminal on his word.

Without lingering on any conflict - and so stopping short of melodrama - Bank Holiday provides a realistic, if understated and codified, view of relationships and emotions: those often run their course, can be fleeting or shallow, but that is not an indictment on anyone.

Another curious aspect is the semi-documentary quality of the film. (Actual documentary footage of King George V and Queen Mary riding in a carriage during the Royal Silver Jubilee celebration of 1935 is included in a flashback, but the fictional narrative, steeped in the everyday life, also doubles as a faithful historical depiction.) One may discover that the Boots logo is still the same; that train journeys nowadays are - incredibly - an improvement on those conducted in England in the 1930s; that the modern ideas of comfort and luxury are quite elaborate in comparison to the ones enjoyed by Reed's characters. Unable to find 'room at the inn', hundreds of holiday-makers spend the night on the beach, under the open skies - in their usual clothes, with suitcases for pillows.

There is an ease to decisions, contrasted with a lingering unease in the background. The front page of a newspaper declares: 'War Clouds Over Europe'. A line of dialogue goes, 'Besides, you never know what is going to happen in the world nowadays. You got to try to be happy while you can.'

Try they did, and we get to see a glimpse of it still.

What a fabulous film! Its description certainly doesn't do justice to this very entertaining and addictive soap-like story about a group people you are immediately interested in. It leaves you wanting more - in just an hour and a half you get to know these people so much so that when it ends you miss them.

I am astonished just how well this as made. Not just in terms of production, acting, writing and all that - in terms of it doing what a film should do, getting inside you, making you feel part of the story, making you live with its characters. To engender an audience's engagement with so many lead characters in a picture is not an easy task but Carol Reed manages to do this instantaneously with everyone. All the stars were aligned for this - there's nothing I can think of which could have been done better, everything blends together perfectly.

I'm not a soap fan but I know that to enjoy those shows takes a while until you get to know the characters. That's what's so exceptional about this - by using stereotypical but not clichéd characters, you know whom these people are right from the start. Because they're so rounded without being clichéd (well ok, a bit clichéd), you instantly like them. You know how they think, how they feel, how they love. You know what they like to do, what they eat, where they're from and where they're going in life. If you had to, you'd probably figure out the names of their pets as well.

A few people have commented that it's a marvellous snapshot in time of life in the late thirties but this is so much more than just something just to watch to get the feel of what it was like to live in 1938. It's a superbly produced drama about what love is. Wuthering Heights' Hindley thinks he's in love with Margaret Lockwood's Cat with whom he's arranged a 'dirty weekend.' She however bizarrely believes she's in love with a man she's only met for about a hour whose wife has literally just died giving birth. And then there's the secondary characters: Rene Ray and her best friend have a deep and loving supportive friendship, is that love? And there's the cockney family - he seems just to want to go to the pub, even at times leaving his wife and family waiting outside in the street for hours. He wouldn't know romance if it punched him in the face but these too seem to love each other in their own way.

Even the most ardent 1930s film fans will admit that a lot of films made in the 1930s were terrible - especially, as much as it pains me to say, films made in England. This however is as professionally produced and as beautifully photographed and scored as anything made decades later - the reason may of course be Carrol Reed. Another reason may be that this was made by Edward Black's Rank-funded Gainsborough Pictures. Another reason may be some of the best acting you'll see in any film from any country in the 1930s. We can fool ourselves into believing that say Jessie Matthews or Joan Blondell are great actresses but then you see Margaret Lockwood and realise, like Edward Black, head of Gainsborough did that she's on a different level altogether. She is particularly outstanding in this, her first headline role. The way she conveys a million emotions in the most subtle gesture is exceptional.

Three On A Weekend stars one of the cornerstones of Gainsborough Pictures Margaret Lockwood who is taking what they call in the United Kingdom a bank holiday. Banks have those extra days they close ergo the expression when folks can't get to the bank business stops so go and enjoy.

Lockwood is going on a romantic and illicit getaway with Geoffrey Bayldon who wants to keep his planned romantic rendezvous a secret. But right before leaving, Lockwood is involved in a case at the hospital where she's a nurse where John Lodge's wife died in childbirth. Lodge is just so immobilized with grief that Lockwood just can't keep a detached professionalism about him. Later on it becomes more than that.

There are a couple of other subplots about a beauty contest and a family of five going on their bank holiday, but the romantic triangle is at the center. The other story lines are woven into the romantic a lot like Magnolia or Crash or even Boogie Nights of more recent vintage.

Lodge is the younger brother of Henry Cabot Lodge, Ike's UN Ambassador and grandson of the older Henry Cabot Lodge the longtime Republican Senator from Massachusetts. Later on he too gave up acting for politics and was Governor of Connecticut. As an American he doesn't sound too terribly out of place in this British film.

This is an early film of Carol Reed who certainly would go on to bigger and better things. It's a pleasant enough romantic diversion.

Most people know the The Grand is in Brighton. The STOCK footage also looks like Brighton albeit a few decades ago; so am not sure what the other review is on about. I do agree that it is nice to see normal people avoiding the flea circus. I read in a review on another film that audiences were easy to please in the old days. Perhaps it was more that life is full up with blood, guts, gore and entertainment was/is suppose to be an escape.

Brighton is given another name, but it is clear that part of the film is set there. The backdrops especially during the night scenes are confusing as they look nothing like the city. Was Brighton ( and permission for filming responsible ? ) or was it confusion created by the director ? Carol Reed made some very good films, but this is not one of them. The confusion of genres is also annoying. Bank Holiday scenes juxtaposed with attempted suicide and childbirth death scenes. The main benefit of the film is to give a glimpse of the times and how much popular resorts were used just before WW2. Margaret Lockwood and Rene Ray give good performances, but the male actors are mediocre. Given these reservations the film is often amusing especially in the ' Brighton ' scenes but emotionally disturbing when the film becomes morbidly concerned with death. A project which to me seems clumsily conceived yet still has many good scenes in it. A banner in front of a Hospital needing more money at the beginning shows a painful relevance to today. Worth watching.