SHE'LL HAVE TO GO

UK, 1962, 89 minutes, Black-and-white.

Bob Monkhouse, Alfred Marks, Hattie Jacques, Anna Karina, Dennis Lotis, Graham Stark, Clive Dunn, Hugh Lloyd, Peter Butterworth.

Directed by Robert Asher.

A very broad British farcical comedy, based on a play, typical of popular comedies in Britain in the early 1960s – and, with some of the humour that characterises the Carry On comedies.

Bob Monkhouse was a popular film and television personality, Alfred Marks more serious. The Carry On the connection can be seen with the presence of Hattie Jacques, much more dominating and posh as an intrusive journalist. A number of popular British comedians of the time have comedy cameos, Graham Stark, before the Pink Panther films, as the journalist’s cameraman, Clive Dunn as a bumbling chemist, Hugh Lloyd as a pompous lawyer, Peter Butterworth as a shortsighted doctor getting himself into tangles.

However, the surprise for many cineastes who come across this comedy is the presence of Anna Karina, the Danish born actress who appeared in films for many decades, a variety of films in the UK, US, European countries – but is still best known as the wife of Jean-Luc Godard in the 1960s and starred in a number of his memorable films of the 1960s. Most would not associate her with this kind of British comedy.

Two brothers, novelists, live in a mansion, little income, manservant played by Dennis Lotis, getting news that a remote cousin was going to inherit the house and probably oust them. The title indicates the tone of the film, the option of marrying her and retaining the money or of murdering her. Which means there are some romantic scenes and several attempts on her life. She arrives, charms the journalist, charms the man servant, escapes all the attempts on her life, then turns the tables on them.

A great number of farcical situations, puns and quips, exaggerations all round. Nowadays mainly for film historians.