She Knows Y' Know

The great Hylda Bakers show,also featuring Joan Sanderson (the deaf lady in Fawlty Towers) and the celebrated chairman off BBC TV's The Good Old Days Leonard Sachs.

Great social history.

This is a black & white English movie running 68 minutes with no faces or names I know or even have heard of. Just a bunch of people that might have been slightly known in the day but did not last, as far as I can tell.

20 minutes into this movie and I have no idea, at all, what it is about or going to be about.

So far, all there has been is inter- and intra-generational bickering. There seems to be absolutely no plot line whatsoever! It is almost like those camera-in-a-house shows where nothing ever happens.

There is some oldsters talking about sex, as they can vaguely remember it and young people kissing and singing. And more bickering.

30 minutes in and the same nothing is happening. I feel I am wasting my time here... I can see why there is no plot posted for this dud. There is none! A spoiler would be impossible. There's nothing to spoil.

When anything happens, I will let you know...

OK, 40 minutes in and finally a plot point. It seems that a girl is pregnant and a young man is accused. It is completely unclear whether he did the deed. The writing is so poor on this point you could drive a Mac truck through it. Maybe that's going to be the only plot point. 29 minutes left. The story does not ask the boy if he did it, at least not yet. He admits it, blandly, so we are not sure whether he did get her pregnant (they never say the 'p' word!). He seems to be willing for a ransom of a house and some money.

The parents decide to find someone else to marry the girl. And that's the plot so far. Not sure if you would want to watch this dog to find out what happens. I guess I will finish (14 minutes left) but I don't think I will like it!

So everything happens in the last third of the movie. Long time to wait for a weak plot. Twist ending. Still, hardly worth waiting for it.

Putting aside the very subjective perspective that all reviewers have of humour, it seems to me that what is interesting about this film now is the social history that it offers. An insight into a world and class that seems to have all but disappeared completely in the space of two generations. Completely transfigured through major economic and cultural changes, mass immigration and global media. The community described in this film was small and localised, homogenous and poor, the remnants of the 19c in the industrialised north. The whole film is an opportunity to showcase the 'comic character' that actress Hilda Baker who emanated from the mill towns of Lancashire had honed on stage and television for 40 years already. The theatre used to bring forth such artists, performers who built a persona on stage, comedians and dramatic actors, whose 'character' was then used in various revues, plays, and later movies and TVs. Audience familiarity was key, they weren't hired to disappear into their characters, but two bing their 'character' to the part. Audiences gong to see Hylda Baker in this tailored vehicle would have known and loved Hilda's peculiarities before they entered the theatre. Furthermore, they would have recognised the 'plot' that another reviewer can't see, I.e. the strong ambitious mother fighting to secure a better future for her offspring. Fighting against the structures of their community, class, background etc. He's at university, already an extraordinary achievement for a working class northerner in those times, and social convention and the offer of some financial security looks set to be used to pressure him into marriage (unfairly?) when the parents of a young woman 'in trouble' tip up at his mothers doorstep. Many around see the offer as golden (which speaks to the poverty of ambition as well as actual poverty of the time, class and place) even the boy himself, who likely knows he's not the father seems minded to accept his lot, but the mother doesn't believe he's responsible, and won't let his 'life be ruined'. She defies the pressure all around, calls out the blackmail and through various comic machinations does her best to ensure his freedom and his return to study. I grew up with Hylda on TV in Sitcoms in her later years, and I thought her hilarious. The tone of this film is oddly real for such a broad comic character, but in its way it reflects its time and place very well indeed. Some of the other actors are weak and it isn't especially clever, it isn't especially funny either, particularly if you don't 'get' Hylda Baker and aren't familiar with her brand of music hall schtick. But it could be compared to a similar but much more lauded film like 'Sparrers can't sing' from the same year, but set in London's East end. Sparrers is a far better film, but the essence is the same, a view into a disappearing world, perhaps one which we should be glad to see the back of, but one which a film like this can really tell us about in ways that academic study and other more conscious investigations can't. Yet again, we have Talking PicturesTV to thank for looking after this film, you can be certain it would be looked after by the BFI it were set in London or was by some obscure minority auteur. But films like this, which were once mainstream, if regional and working class in their appeal, are rudely neglected by that institution. In my view it hardly stands up as a comedy, it isn't the best testament to a Hylda Bakers comic personae either, but it's a fascinating window on another world, and for some older viewers may even bring a little of the warmth of remembrance for some of the 'real life' stock characters of that time and place, such as 'the lodger' whose life is pinpointed by the mother in a short monologue which she delivers when trying to persuade him to put himself forward and marry the girl. All hail the mother, who behind the nonsense of the form is a character I recognise from my own family (and that generation) strong, ambitious, holding it all together, a dynamic force whose life has been about lifting her chicks out of poverty, whose commitment to betterment is laudable, who is not beholden to nor bowed. By the pressure of religious, social or other conventions. And all hail to Hylda and the writers who subtly gave life to her in this now interesting if clumsy period piece.

Hylda Worswick makes it har mission to prevent her son from a marriage to Marilyn Smallhope, who's found herself pregnant.

It's a very enjoyable film from 1962, it's funny, it's charming, it displays many commonly felt attitudes of the time. Pregnancy, marriage, duty, all are explored here, attitudes really were so incredibly different, families so worried about shame, the class wars, it feels like hundreds of years back, not just sixty.

I adore Hylda Baker, I just love her unique brand of humour, and of course she's great, it must have been hard to find roles for someone so unique, she would definitely find her place with Nearest and Dearest and Not on your Nellie. Her mishaps with words are present, but used sparingly.

Joan Sanderson was great here as the opposing battleaxe, Marilyn's mother, she had such a stoic delivery, it's funny she looks as old here as she would thirty years later in After Henry.

Neighbour Jenny was funny, amusing the way she kept on popping in to borrow things.

7/10.

It is quite strange that despite the fact that this film has been showing on talking pictures TV,it has not been reviewed by a UK viewer.There is one who says Hylda Baker is as good as Lucille Ball and the other who cannot understand the film.He needs to see a few old mother riley films.This film is a typical vehicle tailored towards the talents of a music hall star.Baker works well with Cyril Smith,which is just as well since some of the cast are pretty dire.Anyway Hylda is really the whole show,and if you don't like her then you are really wasting your time watching this