A question of balance… The Battle of the Sexes (1959), BFI Dual Format. Out now!

This new BFI issue looks pin-perfect and its spirit of Scottish subversion survives the modest modern approbation its central conceit inevitably brings. Yes, there are some difficult concepts at play here as ballsy American businesswoman Angela Barrows (Constance Cummings) attempts to steamroll a male, grey and stale family tweed makers in Edinburgh, but there’s wit enough to make sure that the joke’s on both sides and that it’s not just about “sex” but modernisation. Mrs Barrows may well be a corporate psychopath but her business sense is up against dinosaurs who source their thread from crofter’s cottages in the Hebrides… she wants to replace them with a factory and artificial fabric! Och, the very thought is enough to drive any Scotsman to seek solace in the nearest bottle of single malt…

Directed by Charles Crichton with a screenplay by Monja Danischewsky – who helped produce Whisky Galore! (1949) - from a short story by James Thurber (The Catbird Seat), it’s another film in which Peter Sellers simply disappears into character. In this case he is Mr Martin, Head Accountant of McPherson & Co. – who like Harris Tweed, follow very traditional practice. Sellers was only 34 at the time but you can only see a middle-aged man of gentle but determined demeanour, a withdrawn Edinburgh accent and powdery grey hair.

Peter Sellers

If you want any file from the seeming chaos of the company’s finance office, he’ll find it for you but it may take a little time. The room is populated by men just like Martin who slave over hand-written tasks amid piles of paper and the smoky shadows of Victorian business practice. There is only one woman there, Jeannie MacDougall (Patricia Hayes), who provides tea and biscuits for the antiquated accountants with begrudging regularity.

It’s an ocean away from the modern American corporation we see Angela in at the start of the film, flash suits, mad-men offices and a look of fear in the eyes of her male co-workers. She is persuaded to take some time off in Scotland and is to be accompanied by brow-beaten Irwin Hoffman (Donald Pleasence) who manages to give her the slip in London as she boards the train to Edinburgh. This is arguably the most grating part of the film; the idea that her “female” obsession with efficiency and work rate is in someway undermining for Hoffman and the rest who would otherwise get on perfectly well in their lazy routines.

Constance Cummings hold the Board Room

Business may be good but, Angela says to McPherson’s top salesman, if the tweed sells itself, why does the company need a salesman? There’s no doubt that the company could do better and yet that’s also a threat to timid firms the country over and this is almost as universal a conundrum as the gender conflict.

Old MacPherson has recently passed away and his nephew, Robert (Robert Morley) lacks the experience and is most certainly not aligned with the corporate values of his Uncle’s firm. Meeting Angela on the train, he decides she is the one to bring the business into the Twentieth Century and, being of naive and English (always a winning combination…) doesn’t grasp that she will bring too much twist to the cosy comforts of the world of tweed.

There’s much delight to be had in seeing the culture clash and the alarm of the greying character actors as Angela begins to work her way – getting them to change their filing systems from one held together by memory to one based on dates, alphabet and order. She buys them calculating machines, replacing the fountain pens that in the quiet office before, Mr Martin could tell if a nib needed replacing by the scratching made on parchments as the men leaned into their patient transitions.

Everything in its place...

Mr Martin takes Angela to the islands to see the “factory” that produces the yarn and once she realises that it is dozens of “mum and dad” crofters in cottages across Harris/Lewes then she decides that it would be much more efficient to build a single factory and then to use man-made fabrics – nylon!

Things have gone too far and Martin strikes back, at first in gentle ways, re-routing MacPherson’s new “squawk box” so that he can’t find where his staff are and then ordering too many clocks – following Angela’s instructions in the wrongest way possible. He almost starts to win, but his upset only causes Robert to fall a little further in supportive love. As the situation shifts once more in the favour of new working practice and “female” efficiency, Martin decides there’s only one way out and, after taking notes from watching a detective murder mystery film, sets about planning the perfect murder…

All’s fair in love and war but you’ll have to see it for yourself to see how the story resolves itself. Whatever happens it’s clear that Martin is fighting a mere battle in an eternal “war” and with Crichton’s assured hand on the tiller we are steered through a gentile romp that still gets laughs through gentle offending everyone.

Morley is brilliant as you’d expect and Cummings gives as good as she gets but it’s Sellers who catches the eye adding subtlety to what even the shallowest of depths.

Battle of the Sexes is out on Monday 20^th April and comes with a handsome booklet stuffed with essays and information as well as excellent extras. Another film I’d not seen from this period and one much in favour in this era of the Talking Pictures revolution and the BFI’s ongoing digital redistribution of films before our time.

Extras on the disc:

Hancock’s Hard Boiled Eggs: Sellers’ contemporary, the Lad from East Cheam himself, Tony Hancock, appears with The Battle of the Sexes’ Patricia Hayes in this cracking collection of 11 egg-cellent Egg Marketing Board adverts from 1966

A Ghost of a Chance (1968, 50 mins): bonus feature-length fun for all the family as Sellers’ chum Graham Stark stars with Ronnie Barker, Patricia Hayes, Jimmy Edwards, Bernard Cribbins and Terry Scott in a corking Children’s Film Foundation comedy

Images of Edinburgh in Archive Film: an atmospheric selection of rarely-seen short films capturing Scotland’s capital in the first half of the 20th century, from the vaults of the BFI National Archive

Woolly Wonders: evocative 1940s archive films of traditional Scottish clothmaking, shot in colour by the great Jack Cardiff

Image gallery

Plus 30 page booklet including an essay by Vic Pratt,  The Complete Man: Peter Sellers and the Battle of the Sexes along with biographies on the main players from Kieron McCormack.

Another excellent package, buy with confidence from the BFI online shop!