1970 British film by Peter Hall
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] An audacious plan to rob a bank leads to double-cross.
Plot
Mr. Graham, an assistant bank manager who works in the West End of London, is dissatisfied with his boring life. He meets Lady Britt Dorset, a spendthrift aristocrat. They devise a plan, along with her husband, Lord Nicholas Dorset, to steal £300,000 from the bank.
The plan is to be enacted on the day that the manager plays golf. Lord Dorset, posing as a bank inspector, substitutes counterfeit money for real money which he places in Britt's deposit box.
The scheme almost fails when a real bank inspector arrives, but a second opportunity arises, and Lady Dorset absconds with the funds. When she fails to show up for the scheduled division of the loot, Graham and Lord Dorset realize that they have been double-crossed. Undaunted, they begin to plan another robbery for the following year.
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]
