Appendix 3.2: Sample films - synopses and character lists
SUMMER HOLIDAY UK 63
and dance number ’Every girl is a beautiful girl when you're a
stranger in town1 in which Don encounters various old, fat,
black clad Frenchwomen who magically transform into stylish
and beautiful women for the dance, and then change back into
their irate and menacing selves as they pursue him brandishing
umbrellas, French loaves, and so on. Stella is constructed as
a parody of both the American opportunist ruthlessly seeking
money and power, and of the ambitious mother whose
exploitation of her child flagrantly violates all the
acceptable traits of motherhood. As far as the relations
between the genders go these are reduced to the badinage of
the peer group, and to a rather cloying representation of
romance which leads directly to marriage. A minor narrative
thread concerns the romance of Don and Barbara. Don, the
'Bachelor Boy' must eat his words:
Oh no, not this one. Girls are all very well, but at a
distance. Date them once, and then run. Date them twice
and they get serious. They're off with that chat about
marriage and weddings and, what's your favorite name for
a girl. Next thing you know you're hooked and wondering
what hit you. No. No girl is going to own me.
and so he does, happily proposing marriage to Barbara at the
end of the film. So the film tells us that women always want
marriage, and that men want it when they meet the right woman.
Marriage is conceived of as a form of mutual ownership. The
stereotypical representations of nation are even more
schematic. France is given the most space; in addition to the
Arc de Triomphe we have various bicyclists wearing black
berets and the anarchic performance in the courtroom.
Switzerland is represented by the Alps and a St Bernard dog;
Austria by a waltz number and a few figures in lederhosen;
Yugoslavia by excitable border guards and barbaric peasants,
and Greece by the Acropolis. Finally there are the
supranational themes: the 'press' is offered as a gullible but
crucially important world wide network of
publicity∕information. Recognition by the press is a passport
to success. Authority in the form of the police and judiciary
of various countries is shown to be universally susceptible to
the instructions of the old and/or wealthy, but also open to
reason in the form of incontrovertible evidence. The
implications of this representation are not drawn out but
given the film's address to the young working class there is a
clear suggestion of scepticism concerning the institutions of
democracy. Like other films of the period there is a certain
technical self consciousness; speeded up action and diegetic
illogicality are freely used to negotiate potential
difficulties in the narrative's construction. The address of
the film to the teenage and young adult fans of Cliff Richard
also assumes a recognition of his back up band, the Shadows.
They appear at three different points in the film: as the
musicians in the Paris dance club; as a group of cyclists
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