Confining this review to the role of the headmistress in this movie, she has to be my most favorite characters of all. Millicent Fritton is a maiden lady who still dresses in the Edwardian garb of her younger day. Ostensibly she is a genteel character who is horrified by the contemporary declining standards of post-war England. But her own ethics are questionable when she needs to save her school from financial ruin. Her carelessness and her permissiveness as regards to her pupil's destructive rampages are to blame for the monetary disaster hanging over her. Alastair Sim must have relished the dry wit of the dialogue he delivers as Miss Fritton. He is able to alter his deep voice into female tones and he is padded out to take on a more womanly shape. With a hairpiece piled high on the top of his head he towers above the rest of the cast including himself as Miss Fritton's twin brother, resulting in something like a mother hen clucking around her chicks. Miss Fritton is particularly motherly to her fourth-form girls with her kindly smile, but doesn't believe in smother-loving as she wants her girls to be able to take on a merciless world when they leave school. For her teaching staff, she hires misfits including Miss Walters who is on the run from the law. It's a toss up to fortune whether Miss Fritton will end up in Holloway Prison herself when her school comes under surveillance from the police.
Review of The Belles of St. Trinian's
