STEPTOE AND
SON (1972)
As the
second batch of series of the hugely popular sitcom STEPTOE AND SON ran through
the early Seventies, like so many TV comedy shows of that era it was given the
big screen treatment. Wisely, the talented writing team of Ray Galton and Alan
Simpson were kept to support the unforgettable character double-act of Harry H
Corbett and Wilfred Bramble as the father and son rag-and-bone men.
Although in
films, sitcom plots are usually opened out, often watered down to their
detriment, both this translation and its sequel managed to stay true to the
bleak trap of the ‘situation’ of the comedy.
Harold is still endlessly trying to extricate himself from his seedy,
conniving old man’s self-centred clutches, his lofty pretensions continually
punctured by his father’s cynicism and shabby personal habits. (Who can forget Albert bathing in the sink with Vim?) Both the writing
and the playing of the show’s principals somehow had the rare skill of making
you alternately appalled and frustrated by Albert’s vice-like hold and Harold’s
inability to break free, and yet both men earn your sympathy all the while.
Harold’s dreams are understandable yet shamefully snobbish toward his father.
Albert’s ruthless, selfish disregard for his son’s healthy independence is
aggravating yet is borne of fear and loneliness. Ultimately, they are doomed to
never leave each other and this is the show’s heart, a strong reason for its
success.
Whilst I've always
found the show funny and can admire the terrific scripts and acting, the depressing nature of the Steptoes’ trapped lives of oppressive gloom made it
hard for me to repeatedly watch it. However, the films are admirable
examples of how to stay true to a formula whilst extending the format into
long-form.
In this
first movie, STEPTOE AND SON, Harold comes home from a night out, besotted with
a stripper, Zita, (Carolyn Seymour). He already plans his future with her like
a junkyard older Romeo. Albert dismisses her as a ‘scrubber’ with his usual
sour grimaces, jealously plotting how best to sabotage her from taking Harold
away from him. As the couple wed and set off on their Spanish honeymoon,
inevitably they have the old man in tow. Has there ever been a more nightmarish
set-up for wedded bliss?
After
scoffing down an expensive lobster in the hotel, there is a peculiarly pervy
sequence where Albert tries firstly to spy through the connecting door on the
happy couple and then listen via a glass against it. It seems somehow wrongly
prurient and yet in keeping with his inexhaustibly disgusting propensity for
making a nuisance of himself. Just as Harold and Zita get amorous, groans from
next door gradually increase till they are forced to check on Albert. He is in
agony from contracted food poisoning and once more pushes his son’s buttons to
force a premature end to the holiday. With only two last-minute seats on the
plane, Zita is left behind. We can see that this will end in tears – but only
for Harold. (Albert makes a suspiciously miraculous recovery once back home). There
is a beautifully poignant scene where he reads a batch of postcards sent back
from her over future days. They begin gushing with love and yearning and end
with a crushing ‘Dear John’. Obviously Albert rubs this in as confirmation that
she was no good: “She’s blown you out”,
conveniently overlooking his role in the self-fulfilling prophecy.
Months
later, Harold finds where Zita lives and that she is pregnant by what she
claims is his baby. Albert soon sends her packing from a second attempt at
usurping him.
More comedy
is found after the surprise discovery of a baby in the Steptoe’s stable. This
coupled with a trio of tramps and a shooting star create an amusing confluence
of Nativity imagery, but to Harold the accompanying note convinces him it must
be his baby left by Zita. His characteristic flights of fancy about working
every hour God sends to give his son the opportunities he never had cleverly allow
the character to indulge both his social pretensions about public school and
also his need for an aspirational name, whilst Albert tries to keep him in
harness once more, by pleading for the plebeian ‘Albert’ instead of Jeremy. The
christening Vicar is asked by Harold for his first own name by way of a
solution, only to find it too is Harold. For Harold, there is no escape from
his past even in the next generation.
After
earning our pity and sympathy by holding down multiple jobs to finance a future
for Jeremy/Albert, Harold’s hopes are once more crushed when the baby is
secretly taken away again by the mother and when Harold confronts Zita, he sees
that actually her real baby is by the multiple-heritage band leader. Just like
the circular world of the sitcom, the lives of father and son at the end once
more shrink to the humdrum drudgery of the beginning.
STEPTOE AND
SON was a well-deserved smash hit, making back six times its £100,000 cost and
leading to a sequel the next year…
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