William Comes to Town

A strange film for today"s audience to appreciate and, made even stranger by being split into "serial" episodes with little regard for proper pacing e.g. One episode ends with William's brother saying "I want a word with you." And the next episode begins with the conversation! It is however, a fascinating portrayal of an imagined middle-class post-war childhood where kids can do practically anything they please, including just walking into 10 Downing Street in the hope of talking to the PM! Having said that, retribution always looms with the threat of a walloping.

The story, such as it is, centres around William wanting to share his Dad's ideas for the country with those in Whitehall but also, more importantly, getting his Dad to take him to the circus. National recognition results in a shower of unsolicited gifts including a chimp which William dresses in his spare school uniform cueing a very amusing sequence where the family mistake it for the boy himself!

The climax of the film takes place at London Olympia and features William climbing up the indoor rollercoaster track. This is a very alarming sequence since at times he is shown to be about 8 metres above the ground with no visible safety line and, he has to dodge a rollercoaster car by dropping through the gap in the track. Scary! Animal Rights activists will be seriously offended by the horses and elephant acts shown in the closing sequence but, remember that was the way things were at the time. Circuses are not like that now (Well not in the U. K at any rate!) Really a film to watch if you're a septuagenarian like me and have read the William books by Richmal Crompton.

Doing a bit of research preparatory to writing some comments about this movie, I discovered that Richmal Crompton wrote many stories about William and his pals from the 1920s until her death in 1970. They were, apparently very popular in Britain, and two movies were made in the late forties starring William Graham as the eponymous scamp. In this, the second movie, William goes to London to consult with the pleasant and vague Minister for Economics A.E. Matthews about having Williams' father fix the country's problems, brings a monkey home, then goes to the circus to get Mr. Matthews to write a note to get him out of trouble.

Everyone seems to live in that vague sort of middle-class world in which people keep comic servants and complain about money, where young boys dress in short pants, ties, and schoolboy caps which make perfect targets for water bombs dropped from the third floor, nothing bad ever really happens and no one ever quite learns a lesson, despite frequent beatings by the paterfamilias, played here by never-quite-apoplectic Garry Marsh. It's filled out with monkeys, circuses and roller coasters, and there are nice small comic bits for Jon Pertwee and Norman Pierce.

And elephants! It's all very pleasant harmless fun and must have been very comfortable for young parents who had first met William when they were children themselves, to find him just the same as they remembered him.

Given that this is basically a very long advertisement for Bertram Mills' Circus, it is a very entertaining movie. The jokes are amusing, the child actors pretty good, production values decent. Garry Marsh, playing to type as the stern but kind paterfamilias, is as reliable as ever and dominates the film. No doubt the many gags revolving around the beating of children or the abuse of animals would not pass muster in these somewhat more politically correct times. Nevertheless, it is a very interesting picture of upper middle class life in the Home Counties of Britain in the austerity years immediately after WWII. Mr Brown's complaints about being short of cash while supporting a full-time comic servant whose sole duties seem to be serving up two-course breakfasts and three-course lunches (Mrs Brown does the ironing, I noticed) perhaps strike the modern viewer as a little hollow. Lots of interesting early appearances from soon-to-be-popular actors, including Jon Pertwee, Peter Butterworth and Michael Balfour. Well worth seeing, pretty funny, not painful, but overlong.

The Just William books began being published in the 1920s and went on till 1950.Books of this nature were very popular.I preferred Enid Blyton "Five"series.Now I can see why.Williams antics are a pain in the backside as he really is insufferable.I never liked the circus.The sight of those poor elephants being made to prance around is rather disturbing.Not very entertaining.