DECLINE AND FALL... OF A BIRDWATCHER!

UK, 1968, 113 Minutes, Colour.
Robin Phillips, Genevieve Page, Donald Wolfit, Leo Mc Kern, Colin Blakely, Robert Harris, Felix Aylmer.
Directed by John Krish.

Decline and Fall... of a Birdwatcher offers an anti-hero, brought up to date from Evelyn Waugh's novel of the 1920's, is Paul Pennyfeather. Critics object to Waugh films over-doing English cranks and eccentrics, but the treatment here is not as heavy as the hilarious vulgarity of Tony Richardson's The Loved One. Rather the cranks are popular caricatures of schoolmasters, judges, gaolers, criminals. Waugh could get away with his satire because of his skill in word sketching. He could skip from sketch to sketch. The risk of dramatising Waugh is that the eccentrics are continually before the audiences' eyes and in action. Therefore, Decline and Fall and The Loved One, although necessarily more heavy handed than the novels, seem to me to be genuine Waugh. Robin Phillips (like a young Dirk Bogarde) plays the innocent hero while 'the whole world is bent'. A host of English character actors depict the Waugh collection of oddities.

1. The significance of the title? The addition of a birdwatcher and its ambiguity? Its relationship to Gibbons' classic? Audience expectations from an Evelyn Waugh story? The updating of the original novel? The additions? A satisfactory film version of a novel?

2. The influence of Evelyn Waugh's reputation? The outlook that he had on the world and on people, the satirical approach, characters and caricatures? Heightened and ridiculous situations? The type of insight he strove for via comedy?

3. The importance of the use of colour, decor and its elaborate presentation, modern look? The credits, for example?

4. The importance of the focus on Paul? How sympathetic a character? The opening and his misfortune, the presentation of his character, a victim? The innocent young man? His naivety in accepting his job? Fate and the directions in which it led? Chance and those that he took? His opportunism? A pleasant kind of nun in the school? His infatuation with Margot? His accepting the job? The reality of his love, yet his being out of place in such a world? His naivety in believing in marriage? The inevitability of his being tricked? The effect of his being branded a criminal? How much was he affected by his associates? The experience of prison, of being rescued? On what was he basing his new start in life? Was he a real character or a type? How was he to be interpreted if he was a type of the innocent young man?

5. The importance of Margot and the role of the modern woman? In relation to the naive young man? Causing his decline and fall? The significance of her initial appearance in the rain? Her style, fashion, clothes, the colours of her cars? The men who attended her? Her relationship with her son? The elaborate nature of her how? Seeing her at work in the prostitute traffic? The glossy look and yet the evil underneath? Her connections, truth and lies, using people? Her getting out of the marriage? Her marrying the Home Secretary? As a symbol of the type?

6. The satire on English schools and their type? The running of the school itself? Fagan and his tyranny, Grimes and his deceptions, his bigamy? Prendergast and his being hidden away? Flossie and her desperate need to be Harried? Philbrick and his criminal background? The parallel between the school and the prison and the same people being there?

7. The significance of Potts, his relationship with Paul, his seeking out of the truth?

8. The satire on politics, especially in the role of the Home Secretary and his influence?

9. The grimness of prison and the satire on prison?

10. The film's humorous detail and getting its audience to laugh at it and its victims?

11. How accurate a satire on England and England's pretensions?