The Big Job *** (1965, Sidney James, Sylvia Syms, Dick Emery, Joan Sims, Lance Percival, Jim Dale) – Classic Movie Review 5609

Director Gerald Thomas’s farcical 1965 British comedy is a very jolly romp starring Sidney James and Dick Emery as crooks who leave jail after 15 years only to find that the tree hiding their loot is now in a new police station backyard.

James plays George Brain, the brainless leader of an inept gang of thieves, which also includes Bookie Binns (Emery), Dipper Day (Lance Percival) and Harold (Jim Dale) as well as George’s girl Myrtle Robbins (Sylvia Syms).

Though, with the cast, writer Talbot Rothwell and producer Peter Rogers, it is very much from the Carry On movie people, it is more a gentle Fifties-style comedy than a Sixties-type suggestive farce, with warm, priceless performances from the likes of Joan Sims (as grasping landlady Mildred Gamely) and Deryck Guyler as the police sergeant.

May be the script could be funnier but, still, The Big Job is a big hoot, with the lovely cast bailing it out over and over.

Also in the cast are Edina Ronay, Brian Rawlinson, Reginald Beckwith, David Horne, Michael Ward, Frank Forsyth, Frank Thornton and Wanda Ventham.

Wanda Ventham is the mother of actor Benedict Cumberbatch.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5609

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