MRS HENDERSON PRESENTS
UK, 2005, 103 minutes, Colour.
Judi Dench, Bob Hoskins, Will Young, Kelly Riley, Thelma Barlow, Christopher Guest.
Directed by Stephen Frears.
Stephen Frears has been making films for television, small budget features and big-budget Hollywood features since the early 1970s (like Bloody Kids, My Beautiful Laundrette, Dangerous Liaisons, Liam, Dirty Pretty Things). You cannot predict his next project, although most of them tend to be serious with social comment. You could not predict his choice of Mrs Henderson Presents.
While Mrs Henderson Presents is interested in surfaces (especially bare human surfaces) and the film can give the impression of being a cheerful bit of nostalgic fluff, it does in fact go below the surfaces.
Best to say straight out that its subject is the Windmill Theatre in Soho which introduced naked women on stage just before World War II – with great success. Laura Henderson, widow of a businessman who had made a fortune in India, bought an old theatre, refurbished it, hired Vivian Van Damm to manage it and produce the shows.
A fair amount of the dialogue concerns the human body and our attitudes when an issue like the Windmill nudes comes up. Nowadays, very few people are going to be upset by the subject. Does that mean we have become too permissive, that anything goes on stage, screen and TV set? There may be something in that. But that would be to miss the point of Mrs Henderson Presents. The film is more interested in acknowledging that, whether we approve of it or not, we are bodily people. God made us this way. While privacy is important, prudery is an excess of it and can be dangerously repressive with some dire consequences when people break out of it. Prudery seems to get bodyliness and privacy out of proportion.
The Lord Chamberlain, until the 1960s, had to make decisions about what was permitted on the London state and what forbidden. The compromise in the 1930s was that the models had to remain perfectly still – and so the analogy was with the classics of pictorial or statue art (forgetting that across the channel in Paris, they had long since worked out these problems at the Moulin Rouge and other clubs). The film’s screenplay has several speeches along these
While there are moments of total nudity (where the producer and the stagehands strip, for instance, to make the models feel more at ease), if you blink you will miss them. The tableaux on stage are designed to resemble art works. It should be noted that the British censor gave the film a 12 A certificate.
Mrs Henderson is played by Judi Dench, bombastic, complacently upper-class yet invigorated by her theatre and challenged by the issues of nudity. Bob Hoskins plays Van Damm. The Lord Chamberlain is played for genteel caricature by Christopher Guest (writer director of such hilarious spoofs as Best In Show and A Mighty Wind). Should someone suggest he is miscast, others will let them know that he is fact a member of the House of Lords, Lord Haden Guest!
But there is a lot more below the surfaces. This is a portrait of London and British society in the 1930s, the generation that had to face the war while many were still grieving over World War I losses. In the latter part of the film, this is quite strong as it turns into a story of London, the Blitz and the Windmill never closing as it boosted morale. There is quite some pathos towards the end.
However, it is a film of nostalgia for a period that is long gone. Walking around Picadilly Circus and Great Windmill Street where the film is set, you now see a mixture of ethnic groups that are not to be found in the film. This film is a tribute to the undaunted spirit of the British past.
1.A piece of history from the United Kingdom, from London? A memoir? Nostalgia? Morale-boosting? Moral issues?
2.The re-creation of the 30s, the sets and décor, costumes? The city of London? The affluent world? The world of Soho, Windmill Street and the Windmill Theatre? The world of government? The effect of the blitz on London?
3.The musical score, the range of songs, of the period? The acts in the Windmill Theatre? The memories of those performances?
4.The title, the sign outside the theatre, the world of the stage and its style, the heightened performances? The film echoing the performances in its own style – histrionic, sometimes overplayed? The staging and the rehearsals, the performances? Tableaux?
5.Judi Dench as Mrs Henderson: the background in India, her successful husband, being a widow, wealth, the funeral? Her friendship and conversations with Lady Conway? The discussions about hobbies, her crocheting? Her wanting more excitement? Stopped outside the theatre, seeing it for sale, the decision to buy? The discussion with her solicitors? The introduction to Vivian van Damm? The clash of personalities, her dismissive tone, talking to him in the corridor? Her decision to hire him, her imperious manner? Her kindly intentions? The contradictions in her personality – the influence of class and British tradition and arrogance? The more humane qualities?
6.Bob Hoskins as van Damm? The Dutch background, his being quiet about the Jewish connections? The effect of the Nazi persecution of the Jews? His skills as a manager, the first meeting with Mrs Henderson, their clash? His agreeing to work for her, his wanting total control about the presentations? The range of auditions, his relying on Bertie and his opinions? The decisions as to who was to perform, the changes? The success of vaudeville, the continuous shows? The popularity and the audiences? The other theatres imitating them? Mrs Henderson’s decisions about the nude shows? A man of the vaudeville era?
7.The humour of the auditions, the range of singers, dancers, comedy acts, the jugglers? Bertie and his own talent and singing?
8.The theatres imitating the Windmill, Mrs Henderson and her brainwave, the issue of nudity? Her going to see Lord Cromer, knowing him personally, his foppish manner? The discussions, the meal laid on for him? Her powers of persuasion? His rationalisations – and the nudes being completely still? The contrast with Paris and the Moulin Rouge and the acceptance of this kind of show?
9.The issues of morals, standards, prudery? The issue of nudity, the body? The auditions, the rehearsals? The girls wanting everyone, including the stagehands and van Damm, to strip? Mrs Henderson’s? surprise? The tableaux and their style? The audiences and the response? The men? High society? The Lord Chamberlain coming – and the prurient touch with his visiting the dressing rooms and meeting the actresses? The reaction to the closing of the theatre during the war, the show must go on?
10.The success of the Windmill Theatre, going into the war years, the morale-boosting role, the patriotic songs and tableaux? The Chamberlain and the demonstration against the closing of the theatre, the press? Mrs Henderson’s speech and her explanation of the theatre, patriotism?
11.Mrs Henderson herself, the chats with Lady Conway, sitting in on the auditions, her meeting the girls, listening to their stories – and van Damm banning her?
12.The decision to go out into the countryside to recruit the girls, ordinary girls? Maureen of symbolic of the group? Their motives for going to the theatre, an opportunity and life? Their nervousness? Acting? Their personal lives, the strict regime? Maureen and the boy at the door and his going into the military? Mrs Henderson and her intervention? Their going out, sexual relationship, Maureen’s pregnancy – and her being killed? Van Damm blaming Mrs Henderson?
13.The various characters in the theatre, Bertie and his homosexual orientation? His helping with the staging, his singing? The actresses who sang – in the manner of the Andrews Sisters? The girls for the tableaux, the stagehands?
14.Van Damm and the clashes with Mrs Henderson, yet the bonds with her? The upset when Mrs Henderson snubbed van Damm’s wife? Going up onto the roof, looking over London, the blitz, the two dancing together?
15.The perspective on the Windmill Theatre and its experience in retrospect? Judgment? The changes through the rest of the 20th century – with permits and permissiveness? The seeming innocence of the Windmill days?
