I first saw this film on its cinema release and thought it a gentle, slightly dated but amusing English comedy. Watching it again last night (it was given out free on DVD with a Sunday newspaper) I realised what a greatly underrated, highly intelligent film it is. In fact I suspect it is a little TOO intelligent for mainstream audiences, which perhaps is why it has never been a blockbuster.
What impressed me was the highly philosophical nature of the plot which deals with the artificial nature of timekeeping in modern society.
Stimpson suffers from the modern disease of believing that all the problems of life can be solved by the imposition of obsessive man made order and regulation (something our present Government appears to suffer from also) in particular with regards to timekeeping. His whole identity is based on timekeeping and he is unable to relate to anything outside his own worldview. Stimpson is the classic tragic overreacher who doesn't realise that his attempts at control are actually having the opposite effect.
The sense of dislocated identity is a recurrent motif in the film. The senile old ladies are not merely there for comic relief - they act as a mirror to Stimpson's own disintegrating sense of self. One of the ladies (the late great Joan Hickson) is stuck in a 'loop' of consciousness relating to sherry glasses, and the other is convinced that she is in the place she has already left, but the third lady, 'aren't we lucky people!' represents the childlike happiness of those who are literally outside time - her polite bewilderment and contented singing at the end of the film as Stimpson is led away underscore this neatly.
Other motifs of dislocated identity and location abound. Stimpson drives a car which does not belong to him, and which does not belong to the girl he takes it from, who is also not licensed to use it. It is then driven in a completely random, directionless way across fields ('we don't need the track!')until it has to be rescued by a tractor which Stimpson refuses to see even though he's standing right next to it. (This particular sequence, with the Morris 1100 driving over the fields, has an almost lyrical quality to it, especially to someone who spent most of his childhood holidays in a similar car).
Stimpson then spends some time in a monastery, where the characters, like the senile ladies, are outside of time in the conventional sense - almost stuck in the middle ages - again the innocent happiness of those outside time is shown by the monk cheering on Cleese in his chase after the car.
Finally Stimpson makes his last ditch attempt to reach the conference in a car stolen from someone who again, does not own it himself, and in a stolen suit which does not fit him which, in a hilarious counterpoint to his own crumbling identity, falls to pieces while he is wearing it.
The only thing the film lacks is perhaps a little more background on what changed Stimpson from being a hopeless timekeeper to an obsessive one, and what happened to him after he was caught.
What impressed me was the highly philosophical nature of the plot which deals with the artificial nature of timekeeping in modern society.
Stimpson suffers from the modern disease of believing that all the problems of life can be solved by the imposition of obsessive man made order and regulation (something our present Government appears to suffer from also) in particular with regards to timekeeping. His whole identity is based on timekeeping and he is unable to relate to anything outside his own worldview. Stimpson is the classic tragic overreacher who doesn't realise that his attempts at control are actually having the opposite effect.
The sense of dislocated identity is a recurrent motif in the film. The senile old ladies are not merely there for comic relief - they act as a mirror to Stimpson's own disintegrating sense of self. One of the ladies (the late great Joan Hickson) is stuck in a 'loop' of consciousness relating to sherry glasses, and the other is convinced that she is in the place she has already left, but the third lady, 'aren't we lucky people!' represents the childlike happiness of those who are literally outside time - her polite bewilderment and contented singing at the end of the film as Stimpson is led away underscore this neatly.
Other motifs of dislocated identity and location abound. Stimpson drives a car which does not belong to him, and which does not belong to the girl he takes it from, who is also not licensed to use it. It is then driven in a completely random, directionless way across fields ('we don't need the track!')until it has to be rescued by a tractor which Stimpson refuses to see even though he's standing right next to it. (This particular sequence, with the Morris 1100 driving over the fields, has an almost lyrical quality to it, especially to someone who spent most of his childhood holidays in a similar car).
Stimpson then spends some time in a monastery, where the characters, like the senile ladies, are outside of time in the conventional sense - almost stuck in the middle ages - again the innocent happiness of those outside time is shown by the monk cheering on Cleese in his chase after the car.
Finally Stimpson makes his last ditch attempt to reach the conference in a car stolen from someone who again, does not own it himself, and in a stolen suit which does not fit him which, in a hilarious counterpoint to his own crumbling identity, falls to pieces while he is wearing it.
The only thing the film lacks is perhaps a little more background on what changed Stimpson from being a hopeless timekeeper to an obsessive one, and what happened to him after he was caught.