"The League of Gentlemen" (1960) on Hulu Plus

     Four years before "Seance on a Wet Afternoon", Richard Attenborough and Bryan Forbes teamed for the entertaining heist picture, 1960's "The League of Gentlemen". This was a year before Forbes made the leap to directing, when he was making his living as a writer and actor. He scripts and co-stars, while British film industry stalwart Basil Dearden directs.

     It's the story of Lieutenant-Colonel Norman Hyde (Jack Hawkins) and the group of men he assembles to carry out a heist. There's an economy of storytelling to the beginning of this picture. In a series of brief scenes each character is established: Major Peter Race (Nigel Patrick) is hosting gambling parties, Major Rupert Rutland-Smith (Terence Alexander) is a cuckolded shell of a husband, Captain "Padre" Mycroft (Roger Livesey) is hiding out posing as a priest and carrying around a case of dirty books, Captain Martin Porthill (Bryan Forbes) is a playboy shacking up with an older woman, Captain Stevens (Kieron Moore) is running a gym and being blackmailed, Captain Frank Weaver (Norman Bird) is a milk drinking sad-sack living with his obnoxious wife and father-in-law, and Lieutenant Edward Lexy (Richard Attenborough) runs a shop fixing radios and gambling machines.With deft strokes of writing and directing we see these characters in three dimensions, with no wasted time or effort.

     "I had a bloody good war", says Rutland-Smith to his wife early on in the picture. When the men first assemble together with Hyde, he goes around the room giving the background of each man and we learn that these "gentlemen" are a group of scoundrels and traitors, perverts and murderers. As it turns out, they did not have a bloody good war. Hyde later explains why he chose who he did, Race is a transport officer, "Weaver genius with explosives, Lexy, a radio king, Mycroft, absolutely first class quartermaster, and the other three, good trained soldiers. Ruthless..." He has formed his own criminal battalion of disgraced vets. It's the type of picture John Sturges (who Attenborough would act for in "The Great Escape") did so well, the story of a group of men coming together to do a job.

     Forbes' script, specifically the first half, is endlessly charming and funny. There are no throw away lines, it's all in service of plot and character. As the story moves forward, though, the screenplay is forced to move into the mechanisms necessary of a heist picture and things get a bit less interesting.

     Dearden directs with a straightforward style and light touch, his main focus is to always keep the audience entertained. The sequence in which the men steal gun's from an army base is a perfect example. Half the men pose as higher-ups doing a spot inspection of the base's food, while the other's steal the arm's. We cut back and forth between the comic scenes of the inspection and the tense scene's of the gun heist. This is a film that wants the audience to smile while they are on the edge of their seat's.The climatic bank heist scene is wonderfully atmospheric and intense. It's a smoke bomb and gas mask laden affair that hearkens back to Siodmak's "Criss Cross" and Lang's "You Only Live Once".

     The movie's portrayal of women is fairly abysmal. Every woman is either a slut or a shrew. This is a "man's movie" where there is no concern for the fairer sex. This is crystallized in a moment when Race asks Hyde about his wife, to which he replies, "I regret to say the bitch is still going strong."

     For a picture that starts off with such strong characterizations, it never really does much with the character's once they are established. The friendship of Race and Hyde is the only real relationship it builds and there's never any real conflict among the men. There's not one single performance that stands out beyond the other's, as the entire ensemble acquit themselves quite nicely. Hawkins, Patrick and Livesey are the most memorable, also it's fun seeing Attenborough play a wolfish, pinstripe attired cad.

     We never feel the stakes are high in this movie, it's too charming for that, it's main concern is with being an entertainment, and in that it succeeds. That being said, we root for the men to pull of the job, so it accomplishes the main requirement of a heist picture. It's just that I wanted to care about these characters more, I wanted there to be more gravity. "The League of Gentlemen" is a delightful piece of cinema, but it can't be considered one of the great crime pictures.  

   

Oh yeah, and check out this Oliver Reed cameo!!