The Breaking of Bumbo

I saw this at the Round-House in London at a big Film exhibition in about 1970 just after it was made. ( I recall the school took us up for the day.) I recall it was mildly funny but betrayed its origin as a children's book. Its attempts to portray a sort of tourist image of swinging London seemed rather anachronistic even at the time. I believe this was about the only time it was shown in public. It poked fun at the British Army Guards Regiments and rather improbably had Bumbo trying to convert the soldiers under his command to passivism and get them to lay down their arms while on parade. It was Joanna Lumley's début in the movie but as it was never shown it did little for her at the time. With the coming of DVDs it has now been released but I don't plan to buy it.

When EMI took over an ailing ABPC in 1970 they decided to get Elstree studios working again.With that in mind they appointed Bryan Forbes as head of production.He produced a slate of 16 films.Some of those,such as The Railway Children,still get an airing on TV.However this film never got a cinema release.It was recently released on DVD and has a recent TV screening on London Live.The film is presumably supposed to be a comedy,well it isn't.It is incoherent.So far as I was concerned the only moment of interest was the brief shot of an Arsenal match at Highbury,not Stamford Bridge as indicated by another reviewer.There are also some interesting shots of London in that era.

What went wrong with this would be satire of a newly commissioned Guards officer who soon finds the routine and social life tiresome and meaningless and is seduced into aiding a group of bourgeois revolutionaries? Well, apart from a rotten title, neither the script, adapted from director Andrew Sinclair's decade old novel, nor the direction are sharp enough and Richard Warwick's Bumbo is just too bland, making it difficult to care that much about him. And the feeble mockery of the establishment, in the form the Guards and their regimental rituals falls flat. There are compensations though, starting with Joanna Lumley as rich fun radical Suzie. Looking absolutely stunning, being particularly memorable in red mock snakeskin trousers, she gives a confident vivacious performance throughout, and the movies' prompt disappearance must have been a setback to her. I'm not sure how she'd regard it today though. Incidentally, at around the same time she made a sitcom with the wonderful title 'It's Awfully Bad For Your Eyes Darling' written by Jilly Cooper. Does it still exist? I presume John Bird was supposed to be an American; anyway he's quite funny, not always intentionally so. Better performances come from Donald Pickering as Bumbo's supercilious superior officer and Don McKillop and Derek Newark as the R.S.M. and C.S.M. respectively. There's a quite witty ditty 'Red is London' sung over the opening credits by Joan Hart, and a glimpse of the Chelsea crowd at Stamford Bridge in the 69-70 season, as well as footage of the Grosvenor Square rioters in 1968, now in some quarters, mocked and derided themselves.

The bottom line is, botched as it may be, this is quite watchable, and I'm sure some will love it, particularly if they're fans of Joanna Lumley and 'swinging sixties' movies. I've seen worse films, and in an era where double features were still the norm, its prompt withdrawal remains a mystery.

Ensign Bumbo Bailey is a young officer in the Fusilier Guards, a fictitious Guards regiment in the British Army. (In reality there are five regiments of Foot Guards; for the purposes of this film the number is increased to six). The regiment is mainly engaged in ceremonial duties, so Bumbo- presumably a nickname, although we never learn what his real name is- has plenty of time on his hands to enjoy the lifestyle of Swinging London. He meets, and falls in love with, Susie, a radical student who converts him to her cause and persuades him to lead his men in a mutiny.

Susie provided Joanna Lumley with her first starring role; she had previously had a small role as a Bond Girl in "On Her Majesty's Secret Service". The film, however, had a rather strange history. It was poorly received at its initial London premiere, and plans for a general cinema release were abandoned. It then seemed to disappear from sight altogether, apart from a TV screening five years later. These days it occasionally turns up on TV, but has never become well-known.

I have often wondered if this is the reason why the lovely Joanna's subsequent film career has been so patchy, even though she has become a major star on British television. In the cinema, however, she has often struggled to find roles in good films, despite her beauty and obvious talent. There have been occasional exceptions such as her cameo appearance in the excellent "Shirley Valentine", but too many of the films she has appeared in, from the likes of "Don't Just Lie There, Say Something!" and "The Satanic Rites of Dracula" in the seventies to the more recent "Prince Valiant" and "Poor Cow", have been quite dreadful. "The Breaking of Bumbo" didn't seem to do much for its young male star Richard Warwick either, as he never really became the big name he was once tipped to be.

Neither Warwick nor Lumley is particularly brilliant, but neither again is disastrously bad. Probably the best acting contribution comes from Donald Pickering as Jorum, Bumbo's pompous but curiously camp commanding officer. The main problem with the film, however, is its script. It would have been quite possible to make a serious drama about a young Army officer who undergoes a crisis of conscience when ordered to do something that he believes to be wrong. (In this case Bumbo fears that he and his men will be ordered to use force to put down student demonstrations). As the ridiculous nickname of the main character might suggest, however, this is not that film. It was made as a comedy rather than as a serious drama. At least, it is a comedy in the sense that it attempts to deal with its subject-matter in a light or satirical manner. It is not a comedy in the sense that it is hilarious or even particularly amusing.

The film's satire is occasionally effective when directed at Establishment pomposity and stuffiness; we learn, for example, that off- duty Guards officers are expected to carry an umbrella with them at all times, but only as a badge of rank; they are not permitted to use it for shelter from the rain. The film, however, misses the opportunity to satirise bourgeois fun-revolutionaries like Susie, who talk about revolution but who, if a real revolution were ever to break out, would doubtless try to flee the country in terror. It fails to say anything of interest about social and political divisions of the Britain of the 1970s, even though this is its ostensible subject. The distributors who withdrew it from general release in 1970 probably knew what they were doing. 4/10