PERFECT FRIDAY

UK, 1970, 95 minutes, Colour.
Ursula Andress, Stanley Baker, David Warner, Patience Collier, T.P. Mc Kenna.
Directed by Peter Hall.

Perfect Friday is Peter Hall's crime comedy and is excellent adult entertainment. It tells of a bank robbery involving a prim and proper deputy manager, an effete, spendthrift earl and his extravagant wife, played expertly by Stanley Baker, David Warner and Ursula Andress. Dialogue is very witty, the plan ingenious. Perfect for Friday or any other day.

1. How successful a comedy was this? Was it funny? Did it explore people's foibles? How well did it use the bank robbery for comic purposes? Was it satisfying entertainment? The implications of 'Perfect Friday'?

2. How strong was the film in its satirical tone? In its presentation of people, especially the main characters? In the situations of banks, personal relationships, class and society, robberies? How was it satirical in its expectations of the characters and their morality? How satirical of Britain in that bank managers and Earls and their wives should commit robberies? How gentle was the satire? How pointed and effective?

3. What picture of English society did the film give? The ordinary bank man, his quiet life and yet his yearnings to be the greatest bank robber of all? Nobility and aristocracy as effete and sponging on society as parasites? Glamorous wives who can outwit all the aristocracy and the establishment?

4. How ironic was the picture of human behaviour in this film? Appearances of morality and conventional behaviour over criminal tendencies and amorality? How was this illustrated in each of the characters?

5. How successful was the flashback technique - the film moving on in its story? The explanations being given as the film went on and complicating motivation? Comment on the formal style of the filming of many of these sequences, posturing and posing, the use of colour, the ironic locations and clothes?

6. What motivated Mr. Graham for his robbing of the bank? What did he have against society, against the bank, against the routine and regularity and dullness of his life? Is this enough to explain his actions? How interesting was the visual presentation of the bank, its prim and formal routine, the bank personalities of the tellers and the managers, their styles? Banks presented as to be robbed?

7. What kind of person was Mr. Graham? His prim personality and yet his change in his encounter with the Earl's wife, as lover, daring, as controlling and masterminding, as wielding power, as moving towards the perfection in his arrangements for the robbery? As being able to adapt when things went wrong? Why therefore, did he not ultimately succeed?

8. How interesting was the Earl of Dorset? As an effete nobleman, as a parasite, as having a thrill in robbing, in needing money, in enjoying the various disguises and in participating in such a well planned robbery? His relationship with his wife? Why did he not succeed?

9. The Earl's wife: the personality and style of Ursula Andress, her seeming to be in the background, her thrill to get such money, her relationship with the hero, did she love anyone? why was it that she ultimately succeeded?

10. How well presented to the audience was the plan? Its details? Audience participation in the conspiracy to rob? How enjoyable was this? The suspense when the plan had to be postponed? The suspense in the performance of the robbery? The pleasure for the audience in its success? The irony of the ending? What comment did this make on the whole proceedings? How seriously was the film meant to be taken? How successful as a comedy and bank robbery film was it?