ABSTRACT

A point-of-view-shot through a windshield of a bus shows the inhabitants of a typical small market town that might have been used for a Group Three or late Ealing comedy, fleeing in utter terror – the opening shot of one of Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat’s finest films, The Belles of St. Trinian’s (1954). It is a film that is as cynical a view of the British class system as The Rake’s Progress (1945) and as visually stylish as their comedy film noir Green for Danger (1946) – and one of the few British pictures of the 1950s to have an idiosyncratically positive view of the popular new folk devil, the teenager.