STOP THE WORLD, I WANT TO GET OFF.
UK, 1966, 100 minutes, Black and white/Colour.
Millicent Martin, Tony Tanner.
Directed by Philip Saville.
Stop the World, I Want to Get Off is a musical written by Anthony Newley. Its most famous song is ‘What Kind of Fool Am I’. Newley was to write a number of musicals including The Roar of the Greasepaint, the Smell of the Crowd and songs for Doctor Dolittle in which he appeared. This film has added material by Alan and Marilyn Birdman, lyricists who contributed with Marvin Hamlisch to such songs as ‘The Way We Were’.
Millicent Martin portrayed the role on stage and Tony Tanner was the stand-in for Anthony Newley. In fact, the film is rather a filmed version of the stage play and seems very restricted in comparisons with other musical films.
Newley was an eccentric as actor, writer, director, singer – and this is a film, as the title indicates, about the meaning of life.
1. How enjoyable was this film? As a film? As a recorded version of the stage performance? Using television techniques? Did the film successfully combine stage, cinema, television techniques? The credit sequences and the preparing for the show? The actors involved and their makeup? The use of masks? The live audience and the applause? The moving around the stage and back to the audience? Did this distract from the film? Could it have been done otherwise?
2. All the world’s a stage. How, in this film, is the stage the world? How valid is it to have the stage as the world? The impact of this technique? The stage as a circus arena for this film? Men as clowns, with masks and makeup? The comic overtones of the film and its meaning, comedy for laughs and for exploring human foibles?
3. How effective was the miming and the impact of the miming? The use of song and dance, the use of places on the stage. the actors portraying several characters, such details as miming for a factory? The use of vaudeville techniques, for Stop the World? The fact that the father was unseen and music used for his replies? Does mime have more impact than realistic acting? Why?
4. What was the basic theme of the film? As illustrated by the title? Its irony and how it punctuates the film?
5. How is the film a modern morality play? The presuppositions of morality plays and fables for enjoying this film? Littlechap as modern everyman? Evie as modern everywoman? How was this illustrated?
6. The emphasis was on the modern world. How pessimistic a view did the film take? How cynical? The dialogue, incidents, songs?
7. How well was Littlechap portrayed in song, mime? The birth sequence and his schooling, his ambition and drives? His ordinariness, wooing his wife, her pregnancy? His work and promotion, Sludgepool? The birth of the first child? His position and relationship to his father-in-law? To his Russian mistress, to the Japanese? His not wanting the birth of the second child? His growing snobbery? Visit to America? Ageing? Opportunist campaign? Old age? Self discovery? Is this meant to be a pattern of everyman’s life in fact? How did the songs illustrate the
exploration of the theme?
8. What insight into everywoman did Evie’s character give? As a 'Typically English’ girl? pregnancy, marriage, children, patience and impatience, support in old age?
9. How important was the satire on Britain and on Russia, Japan, America? How entertaining was this? What points were being made? The use of the same song and its variiety? The same actress giving expectation for
audience entertainment?
10. How important was the satire on typical human situations? (On Britain and Russia, America?)
11. How striking were the songs and their impact: "Lumbered", "Once In A Lifetime”, "What Kind of Fool Am I?"?
12. How much insight and wisdom was there in this morality play?
