By Tim Greaves
For
this reviewer, Terry-Thomas’s turn as dastardly Raymond Delauney in the 1960 Brit-com
School for Scoundrels remains one of
his finest. The actor’s effervescent personality gelled perfectly with the
penmanship of Stephen Potter to create an egotistical chauvinist you couldn’t
help but take a liking to. Just a year later, in 1961’s His and Hers, his portrayal of a similar cad is one of his weaker
turns and rapidly becomes tiresome. It’s all in the writing, folks.
His and Hers was the
penultimate film from Brian Desmond Hurst, whose moment in the sun was the
sterling 1951 adaptation of “A Christmas Carolâ€, featuring Alistair Sim in the
title role of Scrooge. Hurst, along
with writers Jan and Mark Lowell and Stanley Mann, hailed from a background in screen
drama, so comely was not the likeliest genre for them to tackle. The lukewarm
results are testimony to their folly.
Intrepid
adventurer – and author of the hugely successful “I Conquered…†series of books
– Reggie Blake (Terry-Thomas) returns from his latest escapade in the Sahara.
His past expeditions have all been stage-managed by his canny publisher Charles
Dunton (Wilfred Hyde-White); the sharks he fought in the Atlantic were rubber,
the igloo he inhabited in the Arctic had central heating. But this time the set-up
went wrong and so for his new book Reggie wants to do away with the fiction and
tell it as it really was. The problem is it’s boring. When Reggie adopts a
pompous stance and threatens to take the manuscript elsewhere, it causes
friction with both his wife Fran (Janette Scott) and Dunton. Shrewdly aware
that the public is eager for a new “I Conquered…†epic, Dunton conspires with
Fran to pretend to write a book
exposing her husband’s faux adventures – “I Was Conquered by a Middle-aged
Monster†– in the hope it’ll coax Reggie into delivering a book that will actually
sell. But Reggie proves more stubborn than either of them expects…
…“And
much hilarity ensuesâ€, as they say. Except in the case of His and Hers, it doesn’t. As previously mentioned, Terry-Thomas’s
character isn’t very likeable. Unfortunately, rather damningly, neither are
Hyde-White’s or Scott’s. They’re all
objectionable. Thus the intended humour as husband and wife divide up their
house into “his†and “hers†areas falls flat. Their struggles to adapt to their
new roles – he on all levels of domesticity, she in her attempts to immerse
herself in the business of authorship – seldom elicit more than a tepid smile.
So
what are we left with? Not a lot. It there’s any fun to be derived here, it’s
in the form of a myriad of cameos from favourites of the big and small screen.
Kenneth Connor, Oliver Reed, Kenneth Williams, Joan Sims, Marie Deveraux,
Francesca Annis, Joan Hickson – even a youthful William Roach – have all put in
appearances by the time the end credits roll. These cameos certainly lend His and Hers curiosity value, but
there’s regrettably little else for which one could recommend it.
As
a constituent in their “The British Film†collection, Network Distributing in
the UK have just released the film on DVD and (incredulously, given its
mediocre value) Blu-Ray too, though to be fair the crisp black and white print
is pristine. The only supplement offered is a short gallery of original FOH stills.
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