User:NaudikaW/The Bed Sitting Room (film)

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The Bed Sitting Room is a 1969 British comedy film directed by Richard Lester, starring an ensemble cast of British comic actors. The screenplay as adapted by Charles Wood and is based on the play, The Bed Sitting Room written by Spike Milligan and John Antrobus. The film was entered into the 19th Berlin International Film Festival. It is an absurdist, post-apocalyptic, satirical black comedy.

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Plot

The film is set in London on the third or fourth anniversary of a nuclear war that lasted two minutes and twenty-eight seconds, including signing the peace treaty and 40 million dead. It is not clear who dropped the bomb. Three (or possibly four) years after the nuclear holocaust, the survivors wander amidst the debris and The BBC (Frank Thornton) reports the news of this and refers to it as the "nuclear misunderstanding". Most characters avoid naming the "bomb" throughout.

Captain Bules Martin, who holds a "Defeat of England" medal, as he was unable to save Buckingham Palace from disintegration during the war is also referred to as Doctor by Lord Fortnum (Richardson) who acts for a prescription for malnourishment, but fears he's turning into a bed sitting room. When Martin confirms it, Lord Fortnum gets a second opinion frpm the "National Health Service", a male nurse overwhelmed by the extent of the war's aftermath, who confirms the diagnosis true and offers an operation to give Lord Fortnum a bathroom.

Penelope, who lives in a tube train on the (still functioning) Circle line with her parents, gets caught in bed with her fiancee Alan, who then joins their party. It is said that Penelope is pregnant. In search of a nurse, they leave the tub train taking a trunk so as to not look like vagrants, unknowingly carrying a living man who's been ready to be collected as dead for three years.

Two policemen (Cook and Moore), who hover overhead in the shell of a Morris Minor Panda car that has been made into a makeshift balloon, and shout "keep moving" at any survivors they see to offset the danger of them becoming a target in the unlikely event of another outbreak of hostilities. They run into Lord Fortnum and threaten him that if he stops, he'll be liable to be knocked down.

Bules Martin finds Shelter Man, a Regional Seat of Government who survived the war in a fallout shelter and spends his days looking at old films (without a projector) and reminiscing about the time he shot his wife and his mother as they pleaded with him to let them in his shelter. His current wife Doris, picture of a shirtless woman attached to the wall, holds food and they share. Shelter man reveals he saw evidence they dipped the bombs in germs, to infect measles on the population to kill them off.

National Health Service stalks Penelope and her family, and gives Mother her death certificate, despite being alive, and attempts to capture her with a net. Mother slips into Shelter Man's home and loses her way from her family. Mother transforms into a cupboard as Penelope and Alan search for her.

Lord Fortunm call's Bules Martin, informing him that he is at 29 Cul de Sac Place and actually does become a bed-sitting room. He asks for furniture and for Bules Martin to hang a sign in the window saying "No coloreds, no children, and definitely no colored children". Mate (Spike Milligan) a fireguard with nothing left to burn, tricks Bules Martin into leaving so he can move furniture inside. Mao Tse-tung, or Chinaman (Cecil Cheng) moves Mother into the room.

Father is measured by the Police and Martin asks to court Penelope. Despite her love for Alan, Father agrees to Martin as it will help him when he becomes Prime Minister, a position he's is believed to get "his inside leg measurements". Penelope is uninterested in the date. They hold the wedding ceremony at St Paul's, which is mostly submerged underwater. Underwater Vicar (Jack Shepherd) weds them. Martin runs off to get his virility test, leaving Penelope to make love to Alan, but soon goes into labor. Father is selected to become the Prime Minister and tries to hide the trunk from the Police Inspector and Sargent, but fails.

National Health Service insists Penelope's baby stays in the womb, but she delivers it. When she shows it to her father, he is found to be transformed into a parrot. Penelope learns the cupboard is her mother when Martin enters her to sleep.

Father kills himself and his body is cooked due to the starvation conditions that prevail. Mate warns everyone of the radiation and people head inside the bed sitting room. Penelope and Alan find their baby dead. It emerges that Martin is impotent, so he yields marriage consummation to Alan. Rubber Man repents as the Police knock down the bed sitting room, Lord Fortunm speaks up and impersonates God, but is quickly shut down by Martin.

The police bring back the chest and reunite Nigel with Martin. Penelope is pregnant with her next child, which is normal and healthy. The Police Inspector delivers a speech as an indication of hope for the future of the country amidst the devastation when it transpires that a team of surgeons have developed a cure for the mutations involving full-body transplant. Finally, a military band pays homage to Mrs. Ethel Shroake of 393A High Street, Leytonstone, the late Queen's former chairwoman, and closest in succession to the throne.

Themes

Keep Moving

In the beginning of the film, the Police Sargent and Policeman are floating in a car tied to a hot air ballon, patrolling and order to wake up the Electricity man. The constable nudges the Electricty man as the sargrent declares, "Get his feet moving!"

Many characters continue to work in their jobs, despite the world ending. Such as Frank Thronton's character, The BBC, as he comes into television sets and relays the news of what happened before the bomb.

Seeting

Broken tea fieldd,

Release and reception
The film was entered into the 19th Berlin International Film Festival in July 1969, and Richard Lester received the C.I.D.A.L.C. Gandhi Award for it.

On 26 March 1970, the film premiered in London at the CineCenta Cinema on Panton Street (today Odeon Panton Street), which was Europe's first multi-screen cinema. John Russell Taylor in The Times found the film both funny and frightening, but lacking ideas enough for a whole feature film: "Precisely the same objection applies to the film as applied to the play: that it is based on one of those ideas which are fine in themselves but suffer from the drawback that once you have stated them, all you can do is state them again, louder".

In 2012, Film comment writer Johnathan Robbins found the film funny, but also unable to accomplish the seriousness of the subject matters: "Lester may be trying for Beckett, but the weird-to-clever ratio teeters precariously toward the former."

In Frontiers of Screen History: Imagining European Borders in Cinema, Rami Mähkä claimes The Bed Sitting Room as, "the absurdity and madness depicted in The Bed Sitting Room reach beyond the borders of comedy. In doing so, any laughter it might provoke is likely to be that of anxiety, rather than amusement."