The Happiest Days of Your Life (1950) Alastair Sim, Margaret Rut

Alastair Sim, Margaret Rutherford and Joyce Grenfell left such an indelible mark on mid-20th century comedy that it's hard to believe that they only made one film together - especially as it's one of the funniest entries in any of their filmographies.

When the Ministry of Education merges two schools as part of a wartime efficiency drive, an administrative oversight leads to the all-male Nutbourne College sharing a building with St Swithin's Girls' School (Sim's despairing description of this state of affairs as "a most appalling sexual aberration" is rendered doubly delicious by his flawless enunciation of every syllable). Worse, a coincidence of scheduling means that two vitally important inspections are being held at the same time, by people who expect each school to be firmly single-sex.

Director Frank Launder (who went on to helm the St Trinian's cycle) wisely begins with a slow, almost straight-faced build-up, meticulously planting comedic cluster bombs to be triggered later on as the film's high-speed farce mechanics click into gear. As the warring head teachers Wetherby Pond and Miss Muriel Whitchurch, Sim and Rutherford strike sublime comic sparks: the former is the epitome of put-upon harassment (he's not so much a misogynist as someone who feels that his life would be altogether more agreeable without a female presence of any kind above the level of domestic staff), while the latter has no truck with traditional gender roles and is only too happy to usurp Pond's authority at every opportunity. (Rutherford has a field day with a part that was specifically written for her, and which she'd already honed to perfection on stage).

However, it's relative newcomer Grenfell as gawky, lovelorn PE teacher Miss Gossage who manages the almost inconceivable feat of upstaging them both, whether enthusiastically banging a gong ("A tap, Gossage, a tap! You're not introducing a film", admonishes Miss Whitchurch), staging impromptu lacrosse matches at a second's notice or trying to chat up a horrified Nutbourne teacher ("Call me Sausage").

Ealing's contemporaneous comedies may have been subtler and more socially relevant, but for laughs per minute they can't hold a candle to this.

The Happiest Days of Your Life.mp4
Format : MPEG-4
Format profile : Base Media
Codec ID : isom
File size : 1.09 GiB
Duration : 1h 18mn
Overall bit rate : 1 985 Kbps
Encoded date : UTC 2010-07-07 03:54:27
Tagged date : UTC 2010-07-07 03:54:27
Video #1
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L3.1
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 4 frames
Codec ID : avc1
Codec ID/Info : Advanced Video Coding
Duration : 1h 18mn
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 1 918 Kbps
Maximum bit rate : 6 246 Kbps
Width : 768 pixels
Height : 576 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 4:3
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 25.000 fps
Resolution : 24 bits
Colorimetry : 4:2:0
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.173
Stream size : 1.06 GiB (97%)
Writing library : x264 core 80 r1373M 4322f63
Encoding settings : cabac=1 / ref=3 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x3:0x133 / me=hex / subme=7 / psy=1 / psy_rd=1.0:0.0 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=1 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=0 / chroma_qp_offset=-2 / threads=1 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / mbaff=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=3 / b_pyramid=2 / b_adapt=1 / b_bias=0 / direct=1 / wpredb=1 / wpredp=2 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=25 / scenecut=40 / rc_lookahead=40 / rc=2pass / mbtree=1 / bitrate=1918 / ratetol=1.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=1 / qpmax=51 / qpstep=4 / cplxblur=20.0 / qblur=0.5 / ip_ratio=1.40 / aq=1:1.00
Encoded date : UTC 2010-07-06 19:26:29
Tagged date : UTC 2010-07-07 04:01:17
Audio #2
ID : 2
Format : AAC
Format/Info : Advanced Audio Codec
Format version : Version 4
Format profile : LC
Format settings, SBR : Yes
Format settings, PS : No
Codec ID : 40
Duration : 1h 18mn
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 64.0 Kbps
Maximum bit rate : 92.1 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel positions : L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Resolution : 16 bits
Stream size : 36.1 MiB (3%)
Encoded date : UTC 2010-07-07 04:01:05
Tagged date : UTC 2010-07-07 04:01:17