Genevieve (1953)
"Well, frankly, children this is beyond me!"
Rosalind: Ambrose only seems to think about two things. That silly old car — and the other thing.
Wendy: What other thing? Oh. My husband only thinks about the car.
I like enthusiasts. Modesty aside, I write a monthly column for Homes & Antiques magazine on this very subject. And it’s one of the reasons I love YouTube. It’s a mine of arcane information. Anorak heaven. Fancy a used Bentley Turbo R but don’t know where to start? Want to grow obscure tropical plants from seed? Breed rare Asiatic pheasant? Ferment gherkins? Countersink a screw? Or learn to play Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto at home? No problemo. On YouTube, obsessive enthusiasts are keen to instruct you in their mysteries. Guaranteed. And almost always, they’re overweight, unshaven middle-aged men, who all sound suspiciously alike. And my God, don’t they like the sound of their own voices! The editor’s art remains an elusive skill.
Which takes us to Genevieve (1953), the much-loved, rainy Sunday afternoon British classic based on the Veteran Car Club of Great Britain’s London to Brighton car run, which has taken place more or less every year since 1927. It’s a gentle, observant and touching comedy about relationships — a word I avoid using, but in this case, it seems appropriate. Everybody, in their own way, is different. Alan (John Gregson) is a rather serious, bookish, decent barrister, very slightly pompous and self-absorbed. Ambrose (Kenneth More) is a brash advertising salesman, a Mr. Toad in a check waistcoat and bow tie. Alan’s wife, Wendy (Dinah Sheridan), is a bossy, organised English Rose along Fifties lines, and Rosalind (Kay Kendall) is an impossibly glamorous fashion model who plays the trumpet. But the two men share one thing in common: their obsessive love of veteran cars. Alan owns a 1904 Darracq (Genevieve) and Ambrose a 1905 Spyker. An obsession not shared by their long-suffering, practical other halves. For most obsessive hobbyists and collectors tend, I think (and as a former auction specialist, I’ve come across numerous specimens), to be of the middle-aged male persuasion (albeit with some notable exceptions). It’s about order, competitive male ego and control.
Veteran cars were HUGE in the 50s, 60s and early 70s. I cannot stress this enough. By ‘veteran’, we mean cars built before 1919, although I’m aware that the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu (and they should know what they are talking about) categorises a ‘veteran car’ as a car built before 31st December 1904, while cars built between 1905 and 1918 are described as ‘Edwardian’ and any car built 1919 and 1930 as ‘vintage’. But a quick perusal of the invaluable second-hand book website abebooks.co.uk, shows a plethora of books published on the subject between 1950 and 1980. Watch an episode of The Persuaders (1971-72) and bet your bottom dollar there’ll be a framed veteran car print (by Hugh Evelyn) on the bachelor pad wall. In one of my all-time favourite episodes of The Avengers — Take-Over, from 1969, there’s a 1907 Riley parked in the hall of an antique dealer’s country house. I’ve touched on this before. It’s one of my regular themes. How, in the 1960s, the British media was obsessed with the Victorian and Edwardian age, pre-First World War, in a sort of knowing, ironic, Post-Imperial way. But the weird thing (when you do your maths) is that the cars in Genevieve are only forty years old! That’s like making a nostalgic film today about a 1980s Volkswagen Golf. Which rather proves my point. The technological advances — and social change — between 1904 and 1953 were more significant than the technological advances between the 1980s and today, despite the considerable impact of the internet and the digital age. Two World Wars may have had something to do with it. Conflict spawns technological development.
Genevieve, of course, is supposed to be set on the London to Brighton road, which means Surrey and Sussex, a distance of some sixty miles, yet eagle-eyed viewers may spot that most of the locations are actually filmed to the North West of London: in the B-roads, lanes, villages and pubs in the environs of Pinewood Studios, in South Buckinghamshire — England’s answer to Hollywood. Like The One Pin Public House, where they stop off for a drink (‘jugs’ and hanging baskets). That’s in (or was) in Hedgerley (where I grew up), a quiet, quaint, rather beautiful village also used as a location for The Amazing Mr Blunden (1972) and The Belstone Fox (1973) and now perilously close to the M40 motorway, which thunders past on the ridge. Alas, The One Pin, despite dating from the very early 19th century, has been recently demolished to make way for ‘housing’. The ford at Fulmer (over the River Alderbourne), on the other hand, is still with us, although it may have been converted to an Irish Bridge.
For Genevieve is an intriguing snapshot of Britain in the early 1950s. Recorded for posterity in glorious Technicolor. And how it has changed! Take the bit when Genevieve breaks down outside the gates to Moor Park, next to the Ye Greene Manne pub, on the Middlesex/Hertfordshire border. How rural it looks! Run-down farm cottages, narrow lanes, no kerbs, hardly any traffic. But go to Google Map Street View and see how much that spot has changed! The curse of suburban creep. One thing leads to another. Increased traffic and larger cars (thanks to Health & Safety regs, both broader and taller, an aesthetic blot on the landscape) means road widening, road markings, kerbs installed (chemical sprays), ugly urban street lighting; large, obtrusive road signs, an 18th-century brick-and-timber farm building demolished, to make way for a car park — and hey presto! What used to be a rural or semi-rural area is gone forever. Brighton, on the other hand, looks less shabby and less run down than it does today. If you like architecture, street furniture, quaint pubs, ramshackle garages with rusty petrol pumps and enamel signs, you’re in for a treat. I’m also very much taken with the rakish Allard K1 roadster (1948), which makes an appearance towards the end of the film, in lipstick red, driven by a Spiv in a white Homburg.
Kay Kendall is, of course, wonderful. She died tragically young in 1959, of Leukemia at the age of 32. Alas, I’m never entirely sure about Kenneth More, though. Maybe it’s just me, but for some reason, I find him less sympathetic when compared to, say, others playing similar stiff-upper-lip roles: David Niven, Richard Todd, Dirk Bogarde (in his earlier incarnation), Sir John Mills or Nigel Patrick. That said, he’s brilliant in the more philistine, caddish parts: MGs, warm gin and tonics (shades of Neville Heath), rugger-bugger Spitfire pilots — and I’m thinking Eliot in Rumer Godden’s The Greengage Summer (1961) and Group Captain Douglas Bader in Reach for the Sky (1956), a complex, difficult man who according to Ben Macintyre’s fascinating book on Colditz, deliberately blocked the rehabilitation of his soldier-servant to England on the grounds of inconvenience. Dinah Sheridan, on the other hand, like Kay, is splendid — as she as in The Railway Children (1970). It’s a very Fifties type. If you like that sort of thing: blonde, bossy, and hyper-organised. Like Doris Day at the advertising agency.
I watched Genevieve (1953) on YouTube, for free. Curiously, it doesn’t seem to be available on Amazon Prime Video Digital Download. But the Special Edition DVD (which includes a documentary) looks a treat for a bargain £4.99. Blu-ray would also be a good plan: the Technicolor’s going to look fabulous in HD and all that comes with it.
Today’s post is Film No. 113. There are two options on Luke Honey’s WEEKEND FLICKS. Cinema for Grown Ups: ‘Paid-for’ subscribers get an extra exclusive film recommendation every Friday morning, plus full access to the complete archive.
It costs £5 a month (or £50 a year) — a bargain, frankly, when you compare it to a few cups of coffee, a packet of semi-legal gaspers, or a pint of beer in the pub. ‘Free’ subscribers get access to the Sunday newsletter, plus the ‘free subscriber’ films in the archive. Either option is a good bet. And when I get my act together, I’m planning to add a spoken voiceover (mine!) for paid subscribers.
I’ll be back on Friday. In the meantime, why not pour yourself a large gin and something, and settle down to watch Genevieve? It’s a perfect antidote for depressing, Sunday afternoon-itis.
The past is another country never was truer than when watching Genevieve.
I saw it countless times in the 1970s, and yes, usually on a rainy Sunday afternoon, and it always reminds me of those times. The 1970s, and not the 1950s, given I wasn’t even born then!
To us in the 70s, the 50s seemed impossibly far away in the past, but of course, they were a mere 20 years gone. And now the 70s? Well, they’re half a century away…and yet, seem like yesterday.
A lovely piece on a lovely film, Luke!
Yes you are spot on my sixties bedroom had those vintage car prints and sadly my father bought me a Matchbox Silver Ghost rather than Bond Aston Martin. The idea that the cars were only 40 years old is amazing!