The Bargee

Some rather odd reviews on here, though any new viewers will get the general gist of the film from them.

Lothario bargee, girl in every 'port' (or at least all the calling points between London & Brum on the canals). That's Corbett, and his illiterate cousin Ronnie Barker, who'd go on to be one of the top-3 comedy actors here, due to Open All Hours, Porridge, and the 2 Ronnies, and that's just the main ones!

To correct a few, Corbett WAS already Steptoe by the time this film happened, and I expect the director and backers wanted a script that played to those mannerisms, using Galton & Simpson (Steptoe creators -- as well as writing lots of other comedy material) was a good way to ensure it.

Prismark writes an unusually poor review, this was NOT like a "bad Carry on film", that series was aimed at an entirely different crowd (or did I miss Sid James & Babs Windsor somewhere?!).

Oh, and 'dimplet' (more like DIM-plet??) who is presumably American slagged off the film, but gave it 9 out of 10?!

The film is just a gentle comedy, a distraction, playing to the strengths of a mass of British character and comedy actors. Brian Wilde and Ronnie Barker would go on to great success in Porridge, Miriam Karlin had been a comedy icon in 'Rag Trade'. Julia Foster may have got selected for the massive hit film Alfie as a result of her performance in this! Etc Etc.

It adds in a poignant nod to the imminent demise of the canals as working transport for heavy loads, a respected trade in the UK for a couple of hundred years, and carrying with it the rise of the industrial age in the Victorian years.

David Mayall correctly identifies the film as a useful bit of social history, with many outside shots of a lost way of life. This does sufficiently warn potential viewers that as a comedy it is as dull as ditchwater. Ronnie Barker is crushed by Harry Corbets character. This is the kind of product which almost killed the British Film Industry. Have people voted 10 for this film out of irony? (Confession I was unable to see the end of film). Did any one pay to see this at the time?

The film is unique in that it attempts to portray working life on the English canals as it really was in the 1960s, without the affected prettification of most accounts.

The bargees are workmen, Hemel (Corbett) the ladies man trapped by a pretty girl, and propelled to the altar on the end of a shotgun, and Ronnie (Barker) his none too bright right hand man.

The film is set immediately before the end of the way of life that it portrays, as commercial narrowboat carrying came to an end on Britains waterways. At the time of its release, this was a very recent memory, the trade having been finally killed off by the severe winter of 1963.

The boats seen in the film are the genuine article, used in a film about the end of the trade, mere months after it ended. Within a very short time after the film, most of the craft had been destroyed, leaving only a few in preservation.

Yes. To answer the question.

Why yes? Well it starred the wonderful acting of Harry H Corbett and Ron Barker yet - amazingly - this duo appear awkward and contrived whilst working together in this film. Harry on his own is pure screen gold.

Probably thought at the time to be marketed as a ribald comedy - it isn't. Nellie chasing a grown man with a knife down the Rickmansworth cut - followed by Eric Sykes taking snaps of the domestic- isn't very funny or laugh out loud. Dreadful. Eric Sykes playing a jolly naval Jack Tar barely amuses me but clearly had more talent in his naval than I will ever possess. Sad to see such a cameo by a great that could produce 'The Plank'.

Harry H is amazing and died tragically, far too soon. Ronnie went on to work with another Corbett in the golden years of British comedy TV. Both pure talents of gold.

The story line is as weak as the canal embankments found at the time - with the waterways on the point of extinction and about to go into decay and recession. Cuts to cuts were on the way in 60s Britain, transport water and railways destroyed by the bent bureaucrats. What a miserable sodding place England was in the swinging sixties! Perhaps the film reflects this POV, enlivened by the slap and tickle that ensured a more hopeful future Generation X. Galton and Simpson could always write well and pathos came naturally to these talented scriptwriters. So why not forgive the film lacking real joie de vivre that Genevieve and Titfield can provide? Watch it more than once and it will grow on you.

Luckily this film has preserved a happy jaunt down memory lane and possibly helped to inspire enthusiasts wishing to keep open the 200 year old waterways of industrial England.

The film would have to be on the shelf today of any self-respecting canal boats' DVD collection - alongside 'Genevieve' and 'The Titfield Thunderbolt'. It has none of the charm of those two fine films outside of the film's unique backdrop. But what a list of stars all great in their own way. Derek Nimmo, Hugh Griffith and the truly scrumptious Julie Foster. It is a remarkable film of a bygone yesteryear and those British stars - so moving. MaKEs US ALL wanna be on those boats once in your life, eh? I love it.

This is very much a star vehicle for Harry H. Corbett, fresh from the success of 'Steptoe And Son'. Indeed, the 'Steptoe' associations do not end there, as the presence of Ray Galton, Alan Simpson and Duncan Wood suggest.

Like 'Steptoe', this movie is based around a traditional but dying industry (by the end of the film it has only 18 months), that of commercial narrow boat trading. The difference is that in 'Steptoe' the totting is very much a grim existence, but here it is a pretty much idyllic life and you can readily understand Hemel Pike's reluctance to give it up. The Technicolor helps provide a dream-like tone.

Galton and Simpson's script is strong, mixing comedy and drama as Corbett's 'Casanova of the canals' succumbs to the charms of the winsome daughter of the fiery Hugh Griffith. There is an equally strong cast to match, notably Eric Sykes as an incompetent amateur mariner and Miriam Karlin as a vengeful woman who discovers that she is not the only woman in Corbett's life. In my eyes Ronnie Barker steals every scene he is in.

This is possibly Corbett's best screen outing as star and is far better than its general reputation suggests. I first saw it around ten years ago and it failed to make an impression, re-watching it today, I fell in love with it.