Studio Canal’s Vintage label have produced beautiful bluray releases for two underseen Peter Sellers comedies; Carlton-Browne of the F.O. (1959) and Only Two Can Play (1962), in rich new restorations, replete with fascinating bonus features. The releases offer a fascinating insight into Sellers career and British cinema of the late 50s and early 60s, after empire and on the cusp of the sexual revolution. Both films feel like snapshots of a nation trying to find itself.
The films were made at a formative moment of Seller’s career. Following his huge success on the radio with The Goon Show and a memorable supporting role in Alexander McKendrick’s Ealing Studio comedy The Ladykillers (1955), Sellers found himself mainly working in smaller roles in films such as The Smallest Show on Earth (1957), doing solid work but a far cry from the Hollywood comedy legend he would one day become.
This is how he comes to appear in a supporting role in the Boulting Brother’s somewhat incendiary (for the time) comedy Carlton-Browne of the F.O (1958). The film revolves around the sovereignty of a tiny and forgotten island nation called Gaillardia. The inept head of the Department of Miscellaneous Territories, Carlton-Browne (Terry Thomas), is dispatched to investigate the threat that may be posed by a rebellion on the island, and to discover what exactly has the Americans and the Russians so interested in it!
The film is Terry Thomas’ vehicle and it’s marvellous to see him outside of his traditional villainous role. Thomas is naïve, silly and very charming, spending a great deal of the runtime staring in slack mouthed disbelief at the island’s practices and the plots machinations. Sellers takes on the role of Gaillardia’s scheming Prime Minister Amphibulos. It’s a masterclass in making a big impression with little screentime with his usual attention to detail and subtle brilliance. The film is most fascinating as a depiction of post-Suez Britain as a former imperial power, clinging on to the romance of empire and the dream of maintaining an important role in the global order (see also: James Bond and the last 70 years of British history).
After Carlton-Browne, Sellers scored a much larger role in I’m All Right Jack, a huge critical and commercial success earning him a BAFTA. His star ascending, Sellers appeared in Anthony Asquith’s The Millionairess (1960) and directed his first film with Mr. Topaze (1961). This is the context in which Sellers stars in Sidney Gilliat’s Only Two Can Play (1962) as a married Welsh librarian who suddenly finds himself at the cusp of an affair with a married woman with a higher paid job on the line.
Only Two Can Play is contemporary to the Angry Young Men films of the British New Wave, but whereas those films expressed the young British man’s frustration with Britain’s class structures and sexual inhibitions in a full throated cry of anger, Sellers takes a more sardonic approach. He’s the quintessential loveable loser, forever denied anything he wants but always ready with a withering look and a wry remark. It’s how the everyman of the time might have liked to imagine himself.
The film is all together more profound and moving than one might expect from a comedy of his time. Seller’s wife is far from the stereotypical ball and chain. Virginia Maskell plays her as a woman of wit and intelligence who has no interest in being nothing more than a burden to an ungrateful husband. The tension between the two apparently extended beyond the screen with Sellers trying to have her removed from the film, complaining that she couldn’t act, whilst potentially worrying about being upstaged (according to the on-disk experts, more on which shortly).
Both films are stunningly restored, presented in sumptuous, textured black and white with crisp audio. The disks are loaded with fascinating extra features. Carlton Browne features a discussion with Peter Lydon and Vic Pratt as well as Seller’s Best; a 1992 documentary on Sellers ascent to stardom with Roy Boulting, Ian Carmichael, Bryan Forbes and Beryl Reid. Lydon and Pratt share personal reminiscences and provide important context for the film to enjoy it’s context, with an obvious Sellers focus. Seller’s best
On Two Can Play‘s disk features another discussion with Pratt and Lydon, this time focussing on the concept of Sellers taking a dramatic turn after his earlier character work. They also place the film within the important context of his personal life. The disk also features a Behind the Scenes featurette featuring Mai Zetterling, Bryan Forbes, Sidney Gilliat and Roy Boulting. Gilliat features further i
Vintage have excelled themselves with this release of two underseen gems of British Comedy; one boasting a terrific piece of quintessential Seller’s character work and the other perhaps one of his finest performances in a lost classic of two genres.
ON BLU-RAY & DVD ON 26 JANUARY