Perfect Friday

Perfect Friday
Perfect Friday
Directed by	Peter Hall
Written by	Scott Forbes ; Anthony Greville-Bell
Based on	an original story by Scott Forbes
Produced by	Jack Smith; executive; Dimitri de Grunwald
Starring	Ursula Andress; Stanley Baker; David Warner
Cinematography	Alan Hume
Edited by	Rex Pyke
Music by	John Dankworth
Production; company	Sunnymede Film Productions
Distributed by	London Screen (UK); Chevron Pictures (USA)
Release dates	10 November 1970 (UK); 23 December 1970 (US);
Running time	94 min.
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English

Perfect Friday is a 1970 British bank heist film directed by Peter Hall and starring Ursula Andress, Stanley Baker, David Warner and T. P. McKenna.^[1] It was written by Scott Forbes and Anthony Greville-Bell. An audacious plan to rob a bank leads to double-cross.

Plot

Mr. Graham, a deputy under manager in a bank in the West End of London, is dissatisfied with his boring life. He meets Lady Britt Dorset, a spendthrift aristocrat and recruits her and her husband, Lord Nicholas Dorset, to help him carry out his plan to steal £300,000 from the bank. Graham also starts an affair with Lady Dorset.

The plan is to be enacted on a day that the manager absents himself to indulge his passion for golf. With Graham's assistance, Lord Dorset is to pose as a bank inspector there to check the bank's emergency cash reserve, and will substitute counterfeit money for the real money which he will place in Britt's deposit box which she has there as a customer; she will collect the money shortly afterwards, and then they will all take a flight to Switzerland.

Lady Dorset agrees with Graham that they will take a different flight and leave Lord Dorset with nothing, but she also agrees a similar plot with Dorset to cut out Graham.

At the first opportunity, the scheme has to be abandoned when a real bank inspector arrives. When they are able to carry it out, all goes to plan, but Lady Dorset absconds alone with the cash. Graham and Lord Dorset realize that she has double-crossed both of them. They decide to carry out the same plan to rob the bank again the following year.

Cast

Stanley Baker as Mr. Graham
Ursula Andress as Lady Britt Dorset
David Warner as Lord Nicholas "Nick" Dorset
Patience Collier as Nanny
T. P. McKenna as Smith
David Waller as Williams
Joan Benham as Miss Welsh
Julian Orchard as Thompson
Trisha Mortimer as Janet
Anne Tirard as Miss Marsh
Johnny Briggs as taxi driver
Fred Griffiths as taxi driver
Sidney Jennings as taxi driver
Hugh Halliday as cyclist
Max Faulkner as Strong Room Guard
Carleton Hobbs as elderly Peer
Eric Longworth as House of Lords messenger
Brian Peck as chauffeur
Howard Lang as bank commissionaire
Patrick Jordan as bank guard
Malcolm Johns as Swiss boy friend
Garfield Morgan as 1st airport official
Derek Cox as 2nd airport official
Barbara Ogilvie as woman airport official
Georgina Simpson as stewardess

Production

Dimitri de Grunwald had set up a new production and distribution consortium, the International Film Consortium, a co-op of independent film distributors throughout the world. They raised finance for a series of films produced by London Screenplays Ltd – The McMasters (1970), Perfect Friday, The Virgin and the Gypsy (1970), The Last Grenade (1970), and Connecting Rooms (1970). De Grunwald described Perfect Friday's commercial prospects as "safe-ish".^[2]

The film was produced by Stanley Baker who later said of it: "I think he [Peter Hall] will produce film work as interesting as what he's done on the stage. ...What I like about Perfect Friday is that everybody lies to each other and everybody believes each other's lies. I don't know if the audience realises it, but every time the characters speak to each other, they're lying."^[3]

Peter Hall said the sex scenes "were meant to make fun of all those sex films that steam up the West End."^[4]

Critical reception

Kine Weekly wrote that film "is a cynical puzzle loaded with suspense and topped up with brittle sophisticated humour."^[5]

The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "Difficult to imagine what attracted Peter Hall to this routine piece of nonsense. ...As in most films centring on a robbery, the ingenuity of the theft itself is the focus of interest, and in this case the preliminaries—which occupy the first half of the film-are fairly tedious in spite of a witty line or two smartly delivered by David Warner. The tension of the actual robbery is reasonably well maintained, but even this fails to interest as much as it should simply because neither director nor players have engaged audience sympathy. This sort of amoral junketing needs immense verve and charm if it is to succeed, but though Peter Hall keeps up a good pace and is helped by a jolly Dankworth score, he lacks the necessary lightness of touch. And his actors, competent though they are, are as charmless a trio as ever robbed a bank."^[6]

Writing in the Chicago Tribune Gene Siskel called the film "special entertainment."^[7]

References

^ "Perfect Friday". British Film Institute Collections Search. Retrieved 25 October 2023.
^ "A way out of films' financial quicksand?: Global co-op plans for Anouilh, Huxley, Lawrence" by Louise Sweeney. The Christian Science Monitor 1 December 1969: 16.
^ Mary Blume, 'Stanley Baker Likes to Act', Los Angeles Times 14 Aug 1971: a8.
^ "SHOUTS & MURMURS: 'Unless I can play at my work, I'm useless' Peter Hall begins a new arts column" Hall, Peter. The Observer [London] 10 Jan 1971: 22.
^ "Perfect Friday". Kine Weekly. 642 (3297): 48. 19 December 1970.
^ "Perfect Friday". Monthly Film Bulletin. 17 (432): 231. 1 January 1970.
^ "The Movies: 'Perfect Friday'" Siskel, Gene. Chicago Tribune 25 Jan 1971: b13