The Belles of St Trinians (1954, G)

Dir: Frank Lauder, UK, 91mins, 35mm

The antics of the students at St Trinian’s school for girls aren’t what you would expect of young ladies. The Sixers are more interested in horseracing than even boys; the Fourth girls are failing in all their classes except bomb throwing. Miss Millicent Fritton, the headmistress, and her brother, Clarence (both played by Alistair Sim) aren’t exactly a good example – after all, the school’s debts have to be paid somehow. The first of Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliats’ adaptations of Ronald Searle’s cartoons, the St Trinians series joined the Goons radio shows in a new Elizabethan age of non-PC British screen comedy, and a rollicking good stomping of muddy school boots all over the old, threadbare carpet of English society and manners.

Courtesy of the British Film Institute.