3 Homens e um Biquini

Beautiful, wealthy Joan Collins is shipwrecked on a desert island with pompous professor Robertson Hare, Irish stoker Kenneth More, and journalist George Cole. All three men go gaga for Miss Collins and fight among themselves.

It's a purely mechanical comedy with all three men offering various stereotypes, and Miss Collins somehow never dirtying or damaging her one dress. I quickly grew tired of their bickering, and even of Peter Sellers, who is present if not in the flesh, at least in the voice as the voice of the parrot -- actually a cockatoo.

It's written and directed by Noel Langley from a novel by Norman Lindsay. Langley is best remembered as one of the writers of 1939's The Wizard of Oz. He died in 1980 at the age of 68.

This is one of those movies with a dual identity. In Britain it was released as "Our Girl Friday", but in the U.S. it has always been known as "The Adventures of Sadie", under which title it is today sometimes shown on British television. The reason for the separate American title may be to avoid confusion with the 1940 American screwball comedy film "His Girl Friday". In this review, however, I will refer to it by the original British title. The plot is a version of that old chestnut about a disparate group of people being shipwrecked on a deserted island. In this case there are three men and one woman, Sadie Patch, the beautiful but spoilt daughter of a wealthy Northern industrialist. Sadie's male companions are Pat Plunkett, a drunken Irish stoker, Jimmy Carrol, a cynical, hard-bitten journalist and Professor Gibble, a pompous upper- class academic.

When I recently reviewed "Sink the Bismarck!", I pointed out that although Kenneth More had a fairly small range as an actor he was capable of giving some very good performances within that range, of which his role in "Sink the Bismarck!" was one. "Our Girl Friday" reminds us of just how bad he could be when he tried to go outside that range. He normally specialised in playing stiff-upper-lipped upper-class or middle-class Englishmen or Scotsmen, often officers in the Forces. Here, as Plunkett, he gets to play a working-class Irishman. You can tell he's Irish because he occasionally sounds like a stage-Irishman, although he just as often can sound like a stage-Welshman, stage-West Countryman, stage-Cockney or stage-Australian. Most of the time, however, he speaks an unknown dialect not associated with any specific geographic location or social class.

Problems with accents do not end with More. Although she is supposedly a native of Wigan, Sadie speaks with a cut-glass Home Counties accent, unlike her parents who are broadly Northern. (Oddly, Sadie's mother is played by Hattie Jacques who was only eleven years older than Joan Collins). I suppose one explanation could be that she had received elocution lessons after being sent to public school, but two more likely ones are (i) that Collins did not want to attempt a Lancashire accent or (ii) that the film-makers had an eye on the American box office, which has always regarded British regional dialects as incomprehensible foreign tongues.

The story revolves around the complications which ensue when both Carrol and Gibble fall in love with the lovely Sadie, who spends much of the film wandering around in a bikini. (In case anyone is wondering how she had the time to grab her swimsuit when the ship sank, the answer is that she made it herself on the island out of an old sweater belonging to Plunkett. The question of how she had the time to grab her sewing kit when the ship sank is left unanswered). Plunkett seems immune to Sadie, partly because he is semi-permanently drunk, but also because when sober he is perceptive enough to realise that, beneath her good looks, she is actually a prize bitch. The plot is generally predictable, apart from the ending which makes very little sense. There are some silly plot- holes. When a bottle of rum turns up, and Gibble wants to prevent the dipsomaniac Plunkett from getting drunk on its contents, he comes up with a contrived scheme for Sadie to swim out and sink the bottle in the sea beyond the reef. Why didn't he just pour the rum on the ground?

The characterisation is, to say the least, unsubtle. His accent apart, More's Plunkett is the standard caricature of the Irishman from a long line of British cinema comedies and, before that, from an even longer line of stage comedies and music-hall performances. George Cole's Carrol and Robertson Hare's Gibble are equally one-dimensional caricatures, and both actors fail (in Hare's case disastrously so) when called upon to step outside their comic personas and show some genuine emotion in their love scenes with Sadie. If the script tells us that a character is in love, we need to believe it, even in a comedy. The best (or should I say least bad) acting comes from Collins, but perhaps only because her character is required to remain one-dimensional throughout and is never required to show any genuine emotion, genuine emotion being something quite alien to Sadie's personality.

When "Our Girl Friday" was recently shown on an obscure specialist movie channel it was described as a "British Cinema Classic". It isn't anything of the sort. Even in 1953 it was a box-office flop and today it is largely forgotten. It is a film which has faded both literally- the print I saw on television had very washed-out colours- and metaphorically in the sense that it has faded from view. Even the sight of the lovely Joanie in a bikini cannot rescue it from oblivion. 4/10

A goof. Birds seen on the island include a Sulphur-Crested Cockatoo (native to Australia and New Guinea), a Scarlet Macaw (native to South America) and an African Grey Parrot (native, as its name might suggest, to Africa). There is nowhere in the world where all three species could be seen together in the wild.

In many ways, "Our Girl Friday" ("The Adventures of Sadie") reminds me of Lina Wertmüller's "Swept Away", except that "Swept Away" is a very good movie. "Swept Away" has great social commentary and the nastiness of the leading lady makes sense. But this British film, unfortunately, just misses the mark even if it has a very similar vibe.

The story begins on a cruise ship. Most everyone seems to be having a good time except for Sadie. What's Sadie's problem? She's a haughty, spoiled, miserable sort of person. A bit later, the boat hits something and several folks are swept away in a lifeboat...Sadie and three men...one of which already hates her and the other two who just haven't yet had a chance to know her!

Eventually, they wash up on an island and most of the time, Sadie complains and is quite bossy. There is some sexual tension...but ultimately Sadie's personality is the best form of contraception on this island. What's next? See the film...or not.

In addition to Sadie being too unpleasant to make the film fun, the film has an ending which just doesn't make much sense. Overall, a film with an excellent setup but which doesn't quite hit the mark. I think making Sadie a bit less nasty would have helped and the ending...well...it's pretty bad.

Not even Joan Collins in her beachwear on a desert island can rescue this awful film! Kenneth More's crude attempt at playing a relentlessly cheerful, bucolic Irishmen is disastrous! His Dublin accent is embarrassingly poor, and his constant stupid chuckling and grinning makes him a one dimensional stereotypical character! George Cole, playing a reporter, seems totally lost in this film and merely comes across as a dim witted, lifeless character whose monotone voice reminds me of the very worst of amateur dramatics. He was never photogenic and with his limp voice, it beggars belief that Collins could be attracted to such a super dull character, even on a desert island! Robertson Hare plays the stereotypical, eccentric, stuffy Englishman, who shows little emotion but merely recites his lines without any conviction. As a comedy it falls flat on its face! Collins at least tries to make an effort, but the three male companions on the film are so wooden, that she wasted her time making this film. Not only is the acting mediocre but the dialogue is very poor! Definitely a film to miss!

Very funny and inventive tale about three guys marooned on a desert island with snooty Joan Collins. Terrific characterization - the jerk, the dithering old man and the cheeky know-it-all sailor. Kenneth More at his cheerful best as the sailor, veteran Robertson Hare at his scatterbrained finest and George Cole at his most obnoxious. And then there's Joan Collins. Still learning how to act but who cares when she spends ninety percent of the movie in a bikini? The object of lust from all angles and no wonder. When one looks at the sorry state of so many of today's comedies it's a delight to look back on this one and get more than a few laughs from genuine characters and situations. A nice addition for the collection.