Clockwise – 1986 | 96mins | Comedy | Colour

Plot Synopsis

The first major feature film role for John Cleese in the wake of his Fawlty Towers persona was this rambling Michael Frayn script. There is a lip-smacking cast of distinguished thespians to back up the madcap journey to Norwich, notably Benjamin Whitrow’s delightfully charming, angst-masking delivery and Joan Hickson’s blue rinsed, continually talking old dear. The entire film boils down to carefully structured set pieces for a time frustrated headmaster, Brian Stimpson (John Cleese). Stimpson is a man obsessed with manners and time-keeping but builds a basically endearing relationship with his pupils, openly mocking his regime in order to create a bridge between his powerful authority and those pupils in his charge. Throughout the film, Frayn creates disastrous happenings, eccentric annoyances and faulty equipment and indeed, the occupied/broken telephone booth sequence and the mud-stuck car with well-timed Cleese boot could have come from a Fawlty Towers film.

Unfortunately, these flashes of visual comic greatness are swamped by acres of mistimed pathos and elongated situations. The manic trek across the countryside with Pat Garden (Penelope Wilton), driving through fields and passing cows with no comic direction at all sags well before Ivan the farmers (Tony Haygath) brilliant cameo opposite an ever-more angst-ridden. The continual cutaway to lovelorn, pupil seducer Mr. Jolly (Stephen Moore), Cleese’s misunderstanding wife Gwenda (Alison Steadman) and the Shakespearean defence of a young girl’s honour from the pupil’s parents all sap far too much screen time and weaken the focal thread of the comedy.

From the outset, Cleese is proud and privileged to represent his school and, more importantly, infiltrate the upper echelons of posh school education from his comprehensive situation. His fastidious attitude to everything sets him out as a pompous bore but, immediately, we see an endearing persona who merely keeps his life in order because he knows the problems that await him if he doesn’t. There is an earlier concern for Laura’s (Sharon Maiden) parents and an eager offer to pay for the petrol and, later acceptance of his lot. Calmness in the light of surreal behaviour and beautifully collected assurances to his pupils with ‘we can’t eat now because we’re in the middle of a field!’ Throughout the film, Cleese and Maiden have shared the suggestion of monks’ sexuality, reunions of old friends, muddy fields, relations misunderstanding them and criminal activities, arriving from a journey of self-discovery and maturing situations to face the greatest moment of Cleese’s school career.

The film needed an upbeat ending to release the comic tension of the journey and with the headmasters (Benjamin Whitrow) nervous beginnings of apology as the clock clicks to 17:00 it almost gets there. For director Morahan builds up the sequence with a momentary pause, a stirring horn-based burst of music and Cleese’s ill clothed, imposing, confident figure strolling up the aisle to delivery his speech. The journey is at an end, the comedy vindicated, our anti-hero has beaten the odds and made it. But no, the speech trails into disaster, all the loose threads of martial, senile and policing problems break into this moment of glory as the bleakest of bleak endings sees arrest, inability to deliver the goods, an ironic recurrence of the left/right. The spiral into childish treatment of his distinguished group of listeners is misplaced and untruthful, having not even treated his pupils in such a way and reaching the climax of his comic journey of mind game madness with a lapse into totally insanity. Clockwise showcases an interesting, pure performance from John Cleese, in between brushing the memories of Basil Fawlty from his shoes and embracing pin-up status for American housewives.

Review© Robert Ross: Monty Python Encyclopedia.