Fri 18 Jan 2008
THE WRONG BOX. Salamander Film Corp., UK, 1966. Michael Caine, Nanette Newman, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Ralph Richardson, John Mills, Peter Sellers, Wilfred Lawson, Tony Hancock. Director-producer: Brian Forbes. Based on the book by Robert Louis Stevenson & Lloyd Osbourne. [Osbourne was Stevenson’s stepson.]
When I was a kid and growing up, I read a lot of Robert Louis Stevenson’s work, as did a lot of kids my age, but I never read The Wrong Box, nor have I rectified that omission any time since. It was published in 1889, which would have made it a contemporary novel instead the period piece it obviously was in 1966.
So I don’t know, and I’d obviously be guessing, but I imagine that a number of liberties were made to the story — or on the other hand, perhaps not, as the book is described in many places as a “black comedy.” You may or may not recognize the names of some of the players, but on the other hand, you may very well know them better than I do. These are some of the finest British comedians of their era, and there are some who believe that The Wrong Box is the funniest British comedy ever made.
Personally, I don’t know about that, but sitting here at the computer and typing this off the top of my head, there are some parts here that remember laughing at out loud when I was watching and (this is strange) are even funnier as I think about them now.
And I’ll get to some of those in a moment. First, though, something about the story. I guess they’re not very common now, but the main item of business that makes the story and keeps it going is a tontine, a legal agreement between a group of individuals that provides for a common total contribution to be bestowed into the hands of the single survivor.
There’s obviously a lot of material involved in one of these things to power any number of crime stories, which is what allows this movie to be called a mystery movie, but truth be told, looking back in retrospect, there really wasn’t a lot of mystery, nor crime involved.
Two brothers are the last two survivors in this case, and they have not spoken to each other in over 40 years. Michael Caine is the shy grandson of one; gloriously beautiful Nanette Newman is the niece of the other; and they have admired each other from afar (and through windows) for many years. (The two families live next to each other in attached homes.) One glimpse of Caine’s bare upper arm is enough for the lady to fall solidly in fluttering love.
There is a mixup between boxes, naturally enough, one containing a body, the other a statuary being returned. There are attempts at murder, funeral carriages galore, fudged death certificates…
Doctor Pratt [Peter Sellers]: Do I happen to have any death certificates? What a monstrous thing, sir — what a monstrous thing to say to a member of the medical profession! Do you realize the enormity of what you have just said?
Morris Finsbury: Yes. Do you have any death certificates?
Doctor Pratt: How many do you want?
… decrepit old butlers, cheerfully loquacious elderly gentlemen who can speak hours on end on almost anything:
From the book itself, which is online at http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=1585, and repeated very closely in the film:
‘You must have seen a deal, sir,’ remarked the carrier, touching up his horse; ‘I wish I could have had your advantages.’
‘Do you know how often the word whip occurs in the Old Testament?’ continued the old gentleman. ‘One hundred and (if I remember exactly) forty-seven times.’
‘Do it indeed, sir?’ said Mr Chandler. ‘I never should have thought it.’
I thought the movie was wonderfully rendered for the first hour and 15 minutes, plus or minus five, but by the end the pace had quickened significantly, and I confess that I had become lost with what body was there, who was dead and who was not. I shall have to watch it again; there’s no way around it.
I do recommend the film to present-day writers and directors who believe that a film cannot be funny without flatulence, bowel movements, lousy language, nor more than a look at a lady’s ankle. None of those here, and all to the better. (I confess that there is one significant scene of nose-picking.)
And any movie with Nanette Newman in it is worth seeing more than once, no matter the genre nor who else is in it.
January 19th, 2008 at 5:05 am
I’ll be dashed if I can immediately recall any other examples, but I think such tontines were once common devices for crime stories. This movie sounds like great fun. Thanks for letting me know about it.
==============
Detectives Beyond Borders
“Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home”
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
January 19th, 2008 at 8:24 am
It’s been 41 or 42 years since I saw that movie, and I still remember the scene with the arm. I wondered at the time if it was a stunt arm. I still wonder.
January 19th, 2008 at 9:24 am
Peter
From wikipedia:
* In The Wrong Box, a novel by Robert Louis Stevenson, the object is to conceal the death of one of the last two investors.
* A more innocuous tontine was the subject of a M*A*S*H episode “Old Soldiers”. Colonel Potter, the last survivor of his World War I unit, inherits a bottle of brandy (the last from a cache the unit found), which he shares with some of the 4077th M*A*S*H characters to venerate his old friends.
* In an episode of The Simpsons, Grampa and Mr. Burns enter into a tontine during World War II, involving a treasure of antique paintings stolen from a German castle. When the two of them become the only surviving members, they compete for the rights to the prize. Eventually they both lose once the US State Department interferes and takes the paintings back to a German baron, who is the rightful owner.
* A tontine is also used as a plot device in the novel Seventy Seven Clocks by Christopher Fowler, and in one of the Dr. Syn books.
* P.G. Wodehouse used a similar idea in his novel Something Fishy (titled The Butler Did It in the U.S.). In Wodehouse’s version, the money did not go to the last survivor, but to the last son of the investors who remained unmarried.
* The plot of the Agatha Christie murder mystery 4.50 From Paddington, with Miss Marple, is based on a tontine will.
* The French writer Alain-René Lesage wrote a play called La Tontine in 1709.
* The Wild Wild West, the 1967 TV series, season 2 episode 16 is titled: The Night of the Tottering Tontine. In a Ten Little Indians-style plot, James West and Artemus Gordon, assigned to protect a prominent professor, are trapped as a tontine collapses at a seaside mansion during a storm.
* The 2001 comedy film Tomcats features a similar arrangement, where several young men put money into a fund to be paid to the last unmarried man among them. The comic interest stems from the efforts of one of the last two to get the other one married.
* The Being of Sound Mind episode of Diagnosis Murder uses a tontine as the motivation for multiple murders.
* Thomas B. Costain, a popular writer in the 1950s, wrote The Tontine around 1955. This novel, set in the 19th century, gives a good overview of how a tontine works or worked in history.
* In an episode of Barney Miller, which aired 7 January 1982, an old man attempts suicide to allow his cousin to become the survivor of a tontine.
* Tontine is the name of a reality TV game show based on the premise of a tontine: competitors contribute to a common fund, which is awarded to the person who remains in the competition the longest.
January 19th, 2008 at 9:27 am
Bill
It looked real to me, but don’t hold me to it. I’ll have to look more closely the next time I watch the movie.
— Steve
January 20th, 2008 at 9:58 pm
I’ve been away from the computer most of the weekend, so I haven’t been able to do any more research on Peter’s question. I posted the list from Wikipedia before I left, but I somehow have the feeling that I’ve read more tontine stories than these. (I thought of screening out the humorous ones, like M*A*S*H and The Simpsons, but since The Wrong Box is a comedy, I decided to leave them in.) The ones I think I’ve read may have been short stories, not novels, which is why they’re not coming to mind. I’ve not read the Christopher Fowler book — he’s an author I really do have to catch up with — and I don’t remember the story line of the Christie mystery at all. Maybe it’s not one I ever read — or it was so long ago that I no longer have any memory of it.
— Steve
June 24th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
[…] Screenplay) not only wrote the film but starred in it as well. His wife Nanette Newman (mentioned here once before for his performance in The Wrong Box, produced and directed by Forbes) has a very small […]