A collection of generally uninformed and eccentric Brits (including Alastair Sim, Margaret Rutherford, Claire Bloom, Ronald Shiner, James Copeland, Jimmy Edwards, and Mara Lane) travel to Paris and have miscellaneous and unconnected adventures. Nostalgia is on display as much as jokes in this mild comedy. The central idea is that France is a strange and
Wormold (Alec Guinness), an English vacuum cleaner salesman in Cuba, is propositioned by stiff-upper-lip spy Hawthorne (Noël Coward) to become an agent for Britain. Having no applicable skills, his friend Dr. Hasselbacher (Burl Ives) suggests he invent his reports, a suggestion he takes to heart. The heads of MI6 back in London (Ralph Richardson, Raymond
At sea, ferryboat captain Henry St. James (Alec Guinness) spends his time in deep conversation with men. In Gibraltar, he lives with his domestic wife Maud (Celia Johnson), enjoying a quiet home life. And in Spanish-Morocco he is married to the wild Nita (Yvonne De Carlo), and spends his nights drinking and dancing. His first
Bombastic but lovable Charwoman Mrs. Cragg (Peggy Mount) inadvertently takes a piece of scrap paper from a trash can at work to Colonel Whitforth (Robert Morley). That paper has information on her boss’s (Harry H. Corbett) and his partner’s (Jon Pertwee) plans to buy a failing company. The Colonel invests and makes a huge profit. When
Fake-adventurer and author Reggie Blake (Terry-Thomas) returns from a journey to Arabia a changed man, dressed as a Bedouin and telling his wife Fran (Janette Scott) to keep her place. He’s also given up on his adventure books and wants to publish his pompous, semi-religious tract. His publisher (Wilfrid Hyde-White) has little interest in his
Jack Worthing (Michael Redgrave), known as Earnest in the city, loves Gwendolen Fairfax (Joan Greenwood), and she in turn loves him, to a great extent because she thinks his name his Earnest. Her mother, Lady Bracknell (Edith Evans) is not so pleased with the match. Gwendolen’s cousin, Algernon Moncrieff (Michael Denison) sneaks to Jack’s country
Lord Loam (Cecil Parker) does his best to be progressive with regard to the equality of man, though his butler Crichton (Kenneth More) will have none of it. When the two of them, along with the lord’s three daughters, Mary, Catherine, and Agatha (Sally Ann Howes, Mercy Haystead, Miranda Connell), two of the girl’s suitors
Obnoxious American business expert Angela Barrows (Constance Cummings) runs into Robert Macpherson (Robert Morley), whose just taken over as head of his family’s Scottish tweed company. She sets him on the route to innovation, but that goes over poorly with the extremely conservative men-only workers and the reactionary Mr. Martin (Peter Sellers). Martin set out
It’s the start of another term for the gin-making, thieving, violent girls of St. Trinians. Head mistress Millicent Fritton (Alastair Sim in one of the great drag performances) is mainly concerned with how to get enough cash for the school to remain open, and bets the school’s money on a race horse owned by a
Things are bleak on a Scottish island during war times: They’ve run out of whisky. The fishermen are lifeless and miserable, and one elderly inhabitant is dying for lack of a drink. Without Whisky, life is intolerable. When a ship carrying a cargo of bottles of that most desirable liquid ends up on the rocks,
The bizarre and ruthless criminal, going by the name Professor Marcus (Alec Guiness), masterminds a robbery for a gang consisting of conman Major Courtney (Cecil Parker), hit-man Louis (Herbert Lom), spiv Harry (Peter Sellers) and muscle One-Round (Danny Green). The focus of his scheme is an innocent old lady, Mrs. Wilberforce (Katie Johnson), They gain
A cheap, drunken, bombastic widower (Charles Laughton) declares he will not pay the expected marriage settlement for his two younger daughters (Daphne Anderson and a pre-pre-Faulty Towers Prunella Scales) and that his eldest (Brenda de Banzie) is too old to find a husband. That eldest has her own plans: marriage with a lower class bootmaker