Monty Python At 50 - Jabberwocky

When I stop to think about it, I realise that my love for Terry Gilliam films actually predates my love for Monty Python as a whole. That is thanks to another of his films (showing as part of the season but without a Gillaim introduction) - Time Bandits which I watched and loved as a nipper, even though I found it parts of it mildly disturbing (well, it is a Gilliam film after all). This would have been the second film of his that I watched (the first that he was sole director for) but my affection for it is pretty close (I think that Time Bandits and Brazil are his “best” films but this one has a definite nostalgic hit to it). In fact, I had an urge to watch it about six months ago and wrote about it back then so I’ll try to find something slightly different to say about it.

Jabberwocky
Dir. Terry Gilliam / Dur. 105 mins

What struck me when watching it with an audience is how funny it is. There was a part of me, even when watching it recently, that sees this a dark fantasy with a lot of comic elements but it’s very much a comedy. There are the obvious moments of broader comedy but there are a lot of nice little comedy moments - Dennis marvelling at Mr Fishfinger having been somewhere two miles away and expressing his own desire to travel someday; Passelewe’s oddly affectionate way of referring to the King as “my dear” and “my darling”; the nervousness of Neil Innes’s herald following the beheading of the previous one. All of these lovely little comedy moments that nestle inbetween the larger laughs. 

It’s extremely cinematic as well, holding up well on the big screen. As with a lot of the best things, some of that cinematic effect was borne out of necessity - they didn't have full sets for a lot of sequences, begging and scrounging what they could so the grimt, dark and gloomy look disguised that fact that the sets were held together by spit and sawdust.

The Intro
Regular BFI interviewer Justin Johnson managed to tease a few nuggets out of Gilliam during the opening chat. One particular bugbear of Gilliam's was the fact that, without his say-so, the film was marketed in the States as Monty Python's Jabberwocky, leading most American viewers to expect a full-on gagfest in the vein of And Now For Something Completely Different and Monty Python And The Holy Grail. In an attempt to rectify this, Gilliam wrote to US film critics in order to advise them how they should view the film - a massive mistake he says learned never to repeat again!

When asked about how it was working with Harry H Corbett (who was reportedly not the easiest person to work with), Gilliam related an anecdote about Corbett going in for costume fitting. When being questioned about changes to his hairstyle for the medieval setting, Corbett was reluctant to have his hair cut so suggested wearing a wig. As the costume fitter started trying on wigs with him, she began to realise that the main reason he didn't want his hair cut was that he was already wearing a wig! You’ll never quite watch his performance the same way again once you realise that he spent all of his onscreen time wearing two wigs...