This is one of those films from my youth that has left an
indelible, uncomfortable, mark even as a vague memory. Everything is wrong: a
school laden down with so much repression disguised as discipline, “children”
who behave like the worst kind of adults and yet whose self-justifications has
the skewed logic of military dictatorship and a teacher undermined not just by
his pupils but by the system he is there to perpetuate.
I can understand why David Hemmings was so keen to use this
film to make a point but does its brutal depiction of public schooling gone
very wrong stand up in these jaded, a-political times when decades of
Thatcherite and centre-right politics have tended to undermine the left wing
consensus. I hope so because, whilst public schools don’t necessarily make you
into a bad person, strict, unbending ideologies can and the world is still full
of them.
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| The boys of 5B: Kitchen and Cashman at the back |
Taken as a lesson in how the individual can lose their moral
identity in a collective, Unman,
Wittering and Zigo still packs a powerful punch not unlike Lord of the Flies. Here the most ordered
and disciplined of environments somehow turns into a murderous one and if you
can’t trust the upper middle classes to be compassionate… who can you trust?
The story was based on a 1958 radio play by Giles Cooper who
had attended Lancing school and who also sent his sons there: so he wasn’t
necessarily anti private education… The film followed a TV adaptation and was
well directed by John Mackenzie, he of The
Long Good Friday, using locations around Llandudno including the Great Orme
– an area I know very well.
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| St. Tudno Church on the Great Orme |
The film starts on the Orme as a man tumbles helplessly to
his doom down the rock face. He is a teacher at the local public school,
Chantry, "founded in 1678..."
A short-term replacement arrives, John Ebony (David
Hemmings) along with his wife Sylvia (Carolyn Seymour – who left such an impression on my teen self as
Abbey in the original Survivors).
Ebony has given up a career in advertising in order to fulfil his dream of
being a teacher and both he and Sylvia already seem uncomfortably out of place:
too urban and modern for such a traditional establishment.
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| John meets the Head's indifference... |
John meets the Head (Douglas Wilmer) full of impenetrable
certainty who hands him over to the mildly-rebellious art teacher Cary
Farthingale (Tony Haygarth – another consistently excellent performer of the
period) who hints that all may not be as it seems, at least educationally. He
wants to escape but, like so many of the working populace, he’s still there.
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| Tony Haygarth and David Hemmings |
It’s unusual for a master to be married but John is handed a
run-down rustic cottage which he and Sylvia will have to re-decorate. He
returns there for beans on toast after a not unexpectedly tough first day with
his form – Class 5B.
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| David Hemmings, some beans on toast and Carolyn Seymour - a grand night in! |
5B have a strange habit of completing each other’s
sentences, and in this polite gestalt are also quite insistent on maintaining
the routines of their deceased master right down to the jokes he would make
during roll-call: they are creatures of disciplined in-discipline, rebels
within the boundaries of their own cruelty.
Exasperated by their incessant challenges, John threatens to
keep them behind on Saturday and is told that this is not a good idea… Why? “Because that’s why we killed him…” John
refuses to take this seriously and even after confronting the boy who says it,
fresh-faced Cloistermouth (Nicholas Hoye) lets him off – he’s just a 15-year
old kid after all.
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| Cloistermouth reveals all |
But the next day, 5B re-iterate their claims dispassionately
explaining how the deed was done and why… John goes to the Head but he has no
time for him and assumes he’s just struggling to control the class. It’s as if
the school is against the outsider and he must prove his quality to them all:
subservient yet disciplined: “obedience is the child of authority” as the
school motto has it.
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| 5B try to intimidate their teacher |
The Ebony’s are invited to sherry with the head and Mr.
Winstanley (Hamilton Dyce) a fearsome and drily-earnest senior master and his
wife (Barbara Lott). They are part of the fabric of the school and Sylvia is
all at sea in trying to make a connection with them and you’re right with her:
you can understand John’s passion to teach but even Mr Chips would have said
goodbye to this lot pretty quickly.
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| Carolyn Seymour |
But John cares about his boys and ultimately wants to learn
from them: what makes them the way they are? The class is made up of pupils
with extreme upper middle class names – have you ever met a Clackworth a
Blisterine or a Borby? The faces are mostly younger versions of well-known
actors with Michael Kitchen as Bungabine and Michael Cashman as Terhew … all
perform well and if anything viewing faces that you know better in maturity,
adds to the strange feeling of boys acting as men acting as cold-blooded
killers.
Once evidence has been provided of the murder, John has
nowhere left to turn and he and the class arrange a modus vivendi to enable the smart ones to study as much as they
need and for all to indulge in money-making schemes involving betting. John is
trapped but still has a physical edge as he demonstrates against Terhew.
Meanwhile he neglects Sylvia as he increases his drinking
time with Farthingale as they try to make sense of the situation… not just your
usual after-work pub-grumbles.
The game is changed when the Head informs John that, as an
old boy has now become available, they will not be offering him a full-time
post… It’s the way the school works and
John clearly never had the badge of belonging in the first place not being an
“Old Chantonian”.
Spoilers: John now stops caring and spends lessons
reading the paper. The brighter boys start to worry about their results whilst
the more thuggish start to run wild. Without their teacher’s authority they are
unable to self-govern and soon bullying is rife with Wittering the main butt.
The boys target Sylvia as a means of controlling John and,
after an uncomfortable visit in which Terhew lacks the
courage to physically threaten her; there is the film’s most alarming and
uncomfortable moment when the boys lure her to the squash courts with the aim
of raping her. This is not easy viewing but Sylvia stands her ground and turns
the tables on her attackers – none of whom have the experience of courage to be
the first.
Sylvia escapes and tells John but the following morning the
boys arrive in a panic as Wittering, totally humiliated by the previous night’s
events, has gone missing. The game is up…
In the end, John finds out who but not quite why the boys
resorted to murder. They had been made into calculating sociopaths by a school
worshiping its own culture of extreme obedience and loyalty. All other moral
considerations cast aside, the collective good was all that mattered and
sacrifices had to be made.
Hemmings is terrific as the jaded ad man looking for a new
truth whilst Caroline Seymour shows what a nuanced and intelligent performer she is as their marriage is pushed apart under
the strain of meeting this strange challenge. John needs to help the boys but after her
courageous response to her attackers she is less willing to give them
the benefit of the doubt.
Dusty verdict:
Glad I didn’t go to public school… but this is a violent disturbance that can
affect us all in the wrong circumstances.
Unman, Wittering and Zigo’s
strangeness lingers and reverberates – why do we go to war?
The film is available for download from Amazon Prime but the
DVD is out of print. I think I might upgrade but this is one of those films, like Straw Dogs, that you steel yourself to watch: honest and unflinching.
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| Wittering... |
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| MR Hemmings and future Eastender, Mr Cashman |
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| Sylvia faces down the boys |
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