‘Please Sir' on film now

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32639, 22 June 1971, Page 20

‘Please Sir ' on film now

The New Zealand film director, Mark Stuart, has just spent six weeks racing around after a group of unruly East End school kids, making the film version of the television series, “Please Sir.”

The “kids” are in fact professional actors and actresses. But the Pinewood Studios mock-up of the school’s holiday camp—a series of wooden classrooms and dormitories set in a woodland clearing—looks just like a tough secondary school’s summer retreat, reports an N.Z.P.A. staff correspondent in London.

A 90-minute feature, the film uses the same cast as the television series and is due for release at the end of this year. It has already been sold to New Zealand. Mr Stuart, who was bom in Karori, Wellington, and came to Britain at the age of 10, produced the three 13episodes series of “Please Sir” on television. This is his first feature film, and, he says, the most enjoyable work he has done. “The difference between television and film is purely

mechanical—the technique is similar, but the pace is slower,” he says. ' The film tells the story of Fenn Street school’s removal for a fortnight to a summer school, and stars John Aiders ton as form sC’s master, Bernard Hedges, Deryck Guyler as Potter, the janitor, Noel Howlett as the headmaster, and Joan Sanderson, Richard Davies, and Erik Chitty as other members of the staff. “The kids are in fact all in their twenties,” Mr Stuart said. “But I push them around like kids, shout at them like kids, and they react like kids.”

Mr Stuart, himself married with one daughter, was educated at a school in Cooper Street, Karori, before he came to Britain. “It bears little resemblance to Fenn Street,” he says, “but one inevitably draws on one’s own experiences for the purposes of directing a series like this.”

He says that most of the letters he has received about the series express the view that Fenn Street School is true to life.

“But this might be because on several occasions we have filmed on location at schools in the suburbs of London. The

schoolchildren there usually go wild over the filming, but the staff give our scriptwriters considerable help.” He claims there is a trend, as in “Please Sir,” towards a more natural type of humour. “The days of comics getting up and cracking joke after joke to a live audience are over. Quips punctuated by laughter is old hat, and comedy series today have built-in situation comedy. You don’t laugh so much at the jokes as the performers.”

Mark Stuart’s first taste of show business came when he was in his twenties, when he joined a ballet company. Before that he had been a laboratory assistant and a private in the army. During nis ballet career he was a character dancer in several London musicals, and then started doing choreography for television reviews. Offered the chance to direct, he began on light entertainment and comedy shows, and ended up running “Please Sir.” “I just hope the type of humour we fostered in the television series transfers successfully to film,” he says. “It still makes me at least laugh.” , After the film, he would like to do another on loca-

tion. But before that he will direct the next television series of "Please Sir.” "The present inmates of 5C have just left school, so we will be describing what happens to them in civvy street, and also what is going on in the new SC. The only difference will be that Fenn Street School will soon be going comprehensive, with modern equipment and even language laboratories this should open up a whole new area of activities.” He doubts whether John Aiderton, the 5C form master, will continue in the current series.

Aiderton himself, who was also on the set at Pinewood, said that he should be turning up in two or three more episodes, but then would be written out As for this, his first lead in a film, he finds it very slow work. "There is no continuity,” he says, “You might film the last sequence first and then come back to the beginning. And there is no time for rehearsal—you have to play everything straight off the cuff.”

He is confident, however, that the film will be a success. “After all, we’ve got a ready-made audience already -—2 om overseas, and 8m in Britain.”