Appendix 3.2: Sample films - synopses and character lists
SUMMER HOLIDAY UK 63
which they intend to drive to the south of France for their
annual holiday. On the way they meet three girls who are en
route for Athens in an old and unroadworthy car. The girls
join the bus, and the proposed route is changed. In Paris a
stowaway is discovered: this is the American singing star
Barbara Winters (Lauri Peters), disguised as a young boy in
order to escape her avaricious mother and have a holiday for
the first time in her life. Various adventures befall the
party as they travel through France, Switzerland, Austria,
Yugoslavia and Greece. Many of these adventures are the
direct consequence of the machinations of Barbara’s mother,
Stella, and her manager, Gerry, who try to delay the bus's
progress in order to obtain the maximum publicity for their
'missing' star. Barbara's disguise is discovered by her
companions on the bus, though not her true identity. This
unaccustomed anonymity allows her and Don to fall in love. On
arrival in Athens Stella has the group arrested for kidnapping
her daughter, but the tables are turned on her by Don when he
and Barbara declare their love to the assembled press at a
reception organised by Stella and Gerry to celebrate the
'rescue' of Barbara.
The whole is laced with mild, good humoured comedy, the
occasional slapstick scene such as the performance given by
the Great Orlando and his troupe in the French courtroom, and
the engaging spectacle of the double decker no. 9 bus cruising
through France, struggling through the Alps and racing through
dusty Yugoslavia. The real hero is in fact the bus: the whole
film is a rather soft celebration of Britishness symbolised,
as the British consular official Mr Ragmore tells the boys on
their arrival in Athens, by the red bus. The film's humour
relies heavily on conventional British chauvinism familiar
from both the Carry On and the Doctor films popular throughout
the fifties and sixties.
The most interesting aspect of the film now (1991) is the
compendium of stereotypes it offers. The British heroes and
heroines are young and working class (to use the term
loosely); exactly the group enjoying new found economic power
in the late fifties∕early sixties and heavily solicited by the
consumer industries of the period. They are good-natured,
prudent, kind and honest - essentially they are innocent - and
the other characters and events of the story are always shown
from their point of view, which is consequently the point of
view which the film invites its audience to share. The
stereotypes called upon to substantiate the minimal
characterisations of the film fall into two groups: those
concerning gender and age, and those concerning nationality.
The boys are in charge: they drive the bus, they plan the
route, they solve the problems. The girls have a lot of
luggage, do the cooking, plan the party in the Austrian
restaurant and laugh at the boys' jokes. They don't do much,
but their presence completes the group. Older women, however,
are grotesque. Apart from the heavily emphasised example of
the American mother Stella Winters, there is the fantasy song
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