French Dressing (1964 film)

In the early 1960s. Ken Russell established a strong reputation in television, particularly with Elgar (1962). Producer Kenneth Harper later said he "was tremendously impressed with his [Russell's] work on television and thought he would make a first class director."[4] Harper offered him the job of directing the Cliff Richard musical Summer Holiday (1963), but Russell turned it down. The film wound up being directed by Peter Yates and became a big hit (Russell said Yates "did a very good job, considering the material - better than I could have done, I'm sure."[5]).

Harper then asked Russell to direct French Dressing and promised it would not be a musical. Harper said he wanted Russell to make a Jacques Tati style comedy set at a "seedy English seaside resort."[6] Russell was keen to move out of the BBC and said the treatment (by Summer Holiday writers Cass and Myers) "was promising" and agreed to direct. Associated British agreed to finance a script by Cass and Myers.[7] (Russell later said "one of Ken's great weaknesses is that he' very loyal to his friends, irrespective of their talent."[6]

Harper wanted to shoot the film in Herne Bay, best known at the time for having the second longest pier in the country. Russell called it "a miserable resort on the Thames Estuary."[7]

He went there with the writers "to soak up the atmosphere and inspiration" but Russell found the resulting script "uninspired". He later called it "a script of such monumental unfunniness as to make the Crucifixion seem like a Mack Sennett farce. It was in the style of the old Ealing comedies... but even more forced and artificial."[8]

Russell requested work be done on it by an actor friend of his, Peter Brett, who had been in Elgar. This was done but Russell says "the script remained uninspired. We shot it all the same. I learned a lot."[7] He later said the final script "had not one funny line in it and hardly any comic scenes, because he wasn't a very jokey writer and most of my scenes were forlorn rather than funny."[8]

Alita Naughton had worked with Russell in television. He recalled meeting her through her then boy friend and later husband, the photographer David Hurn.

Filming started in May 1963.[9] The movie was shot at Elstree Studios, near London and on location at Herne Bay.[10][11]

Russell later wrote in his memoirs: "The film industry was not ready to accept TV directors. Everything was done by the book, improvisation was frowned upon and there was little team spirit."[7]

It was Russell's first experience working with actors and he was unsure how to do it. "Until then I'd used actors as props, moving them about the landscape like cattle or as set dressing, sitting at tables like tailor's dummies in attitudes of inspiration - hand to head and pen to paper. And as yet they had not been allowed to utter a word."[7] Russell said he was overwhelmed by the concept of actors talking to each other on film "I used to watch in open mouthed wonder and admiration every time it happened."[7]

Ken Harper pulled Russell aside and told him the actors were unhappy he was not talking to them. He told the director "this is supposed to be a comedy. We're not getting many laughs." Russell said defensively "every time Roy Kinnear falls flat on his face the crew kills themselves." Harper said this was "a sure sign we've got a dead duck on our hands."[12]

Harper told Russell "a film director has to be a psychiatrist" and the director changed accordingly "but it was too late as far as French Dressing was concerned. The film was a flop."[13]

Russell said the film "featured the opening of a nudist beach, which only escaped the censors as it took place in a torrential rainstorm in extreme longshot."[14]

Harper said he and Russell "had a blazing row" when the film was done "but that was just to clear the air. I told him to get gimmicks out of his system and concentrate more on the characters. After all it's the people who matter and what happens to them and I said you've got to have heart for want of a better cliche. He took it very well."[4]

Russell said Harper showed the film to Tati "who liked the first five minutes and hated the rest."[15]

The Guardian said "the result is disastrous".[16] Kingsley Amis in The Observer said it had "some genuine high spirits".[17] The New Statesman critic described it as a "seaside rainswept comedy of peculiar charm and freshness."[18]

Reflecting on the film in his 1994 memoir, The Lion Roars, Russell said:

Like oil and vinegar, the ingredients didn’t mix. A script by a couple of West End review writers didn’t jell with the images concocted by an arty director from TV making his first feature." He added that Booth and Kinnear were "saddled with lousy dialogue and a director who seems more concerned with composition than content. There are a few visual gags, mostly at the expense of the mayor and corporation, but there’s only so much comedy you can wring out of extras in top hats and tails making fools of themselves on a beach with buckets and spades and Hula-Hoops.[19]

Russell admitted at one stage he compared the film with Monsieur Hulot's Holiday. "What arrogance! Dream on, Mr Director, dream on. The only truly French touch in your flop of a film came from the pen of Georges Delerue. Undoubtedly, the scintillating score - Georges’ first ever outside his native France - was the best thing in the movie."[19]

The film was a box office flop.[20] Russell later said he felt the film "sadly turned out to be a little too Gallic in flavour for English tastes."[21]

"No one offered me a second chance," wrote Russell. "The big screen, the big time, had been an illusion. Suitably chastened, I returned, like the prodigal nephew, to Auntie BBC."[13]

Harper said in a 1964 interview that "the film industry is likely to cold shoulder" Russell due to the failure of the movie "and he'll be lucky if he's ever given another film to direct...[but] I'm still convinced that within three films he'll come up with a winner."[4] Russell's third feature, Women in Love (1969) would be a huge commercial and critical success.