User Reviews

Seldom seen, unlike the other Ealing Comedies, 'Talking PicturesTV' here in Britain have just given 'Barnacle Bill' a long-overdue primetime outing.

This film continues that wonderful channel's welcome service to viewers, from whom this sort of sterling British fare has been withheld, for far too long, by ignorant, narrow-minded and culturally impoverished TV executives.

'Barnacle Bill' was made at the same period Guinness was involved in David Lean's pretentious and lamentably inauthentic 'Bridge On the River Kwai,' and is, in it's unassuming and jolly way, much the superior film IMHO.

It is one of Ealing's best exponents of that deliciously subversive whimsical wit only the English can create: Huge delight is to be enjoyed in seeing pettifogging and venal petty bureaucrats bested by a retired officer of the Royal Navy - who has seldom set to sea owing to crippling lifelong sea-sickness! - in his epically comic battle with hostile authorities, determined to prevent him from making a success of restoring the fortunes of their seaside town's decayed and neglected pier, so they can all profit from their own crooked and unsympathetic developments for the town.

The jokes are very good - and certainly would be unforgiveably ruined by being baldly described out of context! - and they never stop!! At the same time, in that wonderfully poised English manner, everything is developed and played absolutely straight - which leads us, all-unsuspecting, through the many happy contrivances, which are made believable by dint of taking a recognisably ordinary world for their embarkation-point. We are more than ready to suspend disbelief: We are willing accomplices in this subversion of the stuffy values which unfriendly officialdom would inflict upon us.

Indeed, this film is especially welcome at a time, such as the present, when authority has become increasingly inconsiderate of the decent feelings of ordinary folk, and impervious to our formal appeals, which are contemptuously dismissed as a matter of routine: How glorious it is, then, to see these misguided buffoons, who presume to dictate to us, reduced to helpless laughing-stocks!

How necessary this laughter is today, we can see in the classification warning note with which 'Talking Pictures TV' is obliged to preface each presentation: The blameless - if gently subversive - 'Barnacle Bill' has been given a 'PG' rating, with the earnest explanation that it 'contains outdated racial references that may offend some viewers'!!! Yet the one and only example of such allegedly 'racist' usage is when Capt. William Horatio Ambrose drolly remarks, of the possible annoyance that some holidaymakers fear may be occasioned by a trader in trinkets, who has put out from shore in a small boat in order to exploit the captive market 'on board' the pier (which has been registered as a 'ship ashore' and advertised for virtual 'sea voyages'!), as follows:

'I'm sure the natives are friendly.'

That this gloriously funny, throwaway line - conjuring from a ramshackle pier, standing just yards from an ordinary English seaside resort, deliriously extravagant visions of voyages aboard a liner to faraway and exotic locations - should be the subject of our own ridiculous modern moral arbiters, provides such an apt comparison with the efforts of authority in this film from the fifties to suppress all good cheer, that I find it hard to believe that someone at 'Talking Pictures TV' has not been a little mischievous, and failed to resist the temptation to emulate the satirical spirit of Ealing!

And please, no complaints from my fellow-Brits for giving the English sole credit for this inimitable kind of humour, which really is an uniquely English inheritance - as one says who is himself a proud Welshman, and whose compliment cannot therefore be reasonably arraigned for racist motives!

Laughter - as the British have known for ages - is the encouraging sound of freedom, and humanity. A simple yet priceless commodity.

BARNACLE BILL is a late-stage Ealing Studios comedy and the last that Alec Guinness made for the studio; it sounds like he hated it. The plot is a naval re-run of PASSPORT TO PIMLICO, with Guinness playing a seasick sea captain (!) who decides to turn a local pier into his own ship; fun arises when the politics and legalities of the situation come to the fore. As usual, an excellent supporting cast of British character actors add immeasurably to the fun, and if this indeed a slight piece, then at least it's fun too.

This funny, well-executed film is often overlooked for the simple reason it was the last of the Ealing comedies. In fact, it is credited to "Ealing Films" not "Studios", being made at "MGM-British". To some, this suggests the last gasp of a glorious series of films. In fact, this is fun to watch and makes some sharp digs at good old England, and indulges in a few genre spoofs along the way.

Alec Guinness plays Captain Ambrose, a naval officer from a long line of naval officers who is incurably seasick and cannot serve at sea (a series of clips show his ancestors - all played by Guinness - from a coracle-rowing caveman, to Trafalgar, to Jutland in 1916 - shades of 'Kind Hearts and Coronets'). At one point, to our surprise, we do see him on the storm-lashed bridge of a warship only for the camera to pull back to show a mock-up being sprayed by a man with a hosepipe - echoes of Charles Frend's 'The Cruel Sea' (there is even a brief clip of K49, HMS Compass Rose, from that film) .

To keep up the family tradition he uses his savings to buy a run-down seaside pier. He may be a martyr to seasickness but Ambrose is Navy through and through and with a combination of personality and discipline (giving speeches similar to Noel Coward from 'In Which We Serve') he gets the old place working again. When the corrupt local council try to buy him out at a rock-bottom price he goes the whole hog and registers the place as a ship offering 'cruises' to fellow seasickness sufferers.

'Barnacle Bill' follows the Ealing staple of the 'little man' up against vested interests but in this case the opposition is petty and mean-minded. England is changing, it has a new youth culture, but the changes can be exhilarating and should be embraced (Guinness dancing to a skiffle group is a highlight of the film). Ealing films have always been said to stand for traditional values and the good old British ways of doing things. 'Barnacle Bill' indicates a changing viewpoint - we have great traditions, but there are elements of narrow-mindedness and corruption which we can well do without.

As a footnote: Guinness's 'crew' on the pier include Percy Herbert and Harold Goodwin who would go on to help him build 'The Bridge on the River Kwai' for David Lean.