It’s Christmas on BBC1, and one of their big movies is A Fish Called Wanda.
A Fish Called Wanda is great fun. It opens with a title sequence where each character is introduced with the actor’s name on screen – a habit I sometimes wish other films would follow – it makes it much easier to identify them.
The opening music, by Python musical stalwart John Du Prez, is so emblematic of British films of the 70s and 80s. Opening with a fanfare over a shot of Tower Bridge, and John Cleese summing up in court, and switching to a heavy drum-beat ‘crime’ theme for Jamie Lee Curtis which evokes The Sweeney, The Professionals and A Long Good Friday. It’s as if they’ve distilled the essence of 70s crime movies.
Wanda is a very funny film. Cleese does a good job playing the fairly straight hero, possibly as an attempt to distance himself from Basil Fawlty. The main beneficiary of this choice is Kevin Kline, who gets to play the manic Otto, a superb blend of charm and lunacy. He deservedly defied convention when he won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, since comedy performances are often overlooked by awards.
BBC Genome: BBC One – 26th December 1991 – 21:35
After the movie, recording switches to an unlabelled recording, this time in Long Play (something I rarely did). It’s Jackie Chan in Police Story.
One of the advantages of having a subtitled film like this is that it’s broadcast in letterbox format, rather than pan & Scanned, and the subtitles are placed below the film frame.
After the movie, a trailer for a series of programmes from the works of Graham Greene.
Then, Channel 4 closes down.
Adverts:
- Yellow Pages
- Vick’s Sinex
- Hatfield Galleria
- Sun Progress dishwasher powder
- Guinness
- Colman’s English Mustard
- Black & Decker
- Daz – Janet Ellis
- Domestos
- Ford Escort Encore, Orion Encore, Sierra Chasseur, Sierra Quartz
- Fairy Liquid
- Chatterbox
- Bounce
- Colman’s mustard
- Vick’s Sinex
- Kelloggs Crunchy Nut Cornflakes
- Oil of Ulay
- Wash & Go
- Chatback
- Ariel Ultra
- Chatterbox
- Chip Pan Fires – Keith Floyd
VHiStory 