Made In Britain: Hobson’s Choice

• 25th Jun 2012

David Lean’s award-winning 1954 classic Hobson’s Choice gets taken out of mothballs tomorrow thanks to the Made in Britain team – screening details are available from Studio Canal: http://press.optimumreleasing.net/press/?id=1554

Possibly the most bizarre rom-com I’ve ever seen, legendary Charles Laughton does a variation on his evil guardian from Jamaica Inn as Henry Hobson, a hard-drinking, dictatorial Manchester boot maker. While Laughton gets top billing – and his performance justifies it – this is really Brenda De Banzie’s film as the plot unfurls as a modern day Taming of the Shrew where the shrew is a middle-aged man. As Hobson’s eldest daughter, Maggie, De Banzie transforms what could have been an ice queen into an utterly sympathetic character. (The mockery of Maggie as “a bit ripe for marriage” at the age of 30 is even more barbed given that De Banzie was 45 at the time.)

Maggie’s reluctant paramour, Willie Mossop (Sir John Mills), says “by gum” so often that if you made a drinking game of it inebriation would be guaranteed. Nevertheless, despite this slight irritant and the script by committee (Lean with three others), the screenplay does allow the lead actors plenty of room to flesh out their characters and allows the otherwise implausible plot line to unfold at a pace that gives time for disbelief to be suspended. Laughton gets to showcase his considerable skill as a physical comedian, particularly in a bravura sequence in which he drunkenly chases the reflection of the moon from puddle to puddle (all the better for the gorgeously restored black and white print).

An odd yet straightforward love story that takes in gender politics, alcoholism, illiteracy, class warfare, social mobility, Prunella Scales and a terrifying hangover involving a swarm of locusts and a gigantic pink rat that looks a lot like the creepy rabbit from Donnie Darko. A masterpiece.

Clare Moody