Alf Garnett is one of TV's finest - and most misunderstood - comedy creations. Alf's brought to life by socialist writer Johnny Speight and tremendous comic actor Warren Mitchell. Mitchell is Jewish, yet Garnett is a blistering satire of right-wing bigotry.
The film version of Till Death Do Us Part is superior to the misguided sequel In Sickness and in Health, though slightly behind the '65 TV original. The first half of the movie lacks the ethical counterpoint of his Labour-voting ("Randy Scouse git!") son-in-law, yet still scores with Mitchell's classic study of loud-mouth stupidity.
The joke is Alf himself, not his views, and seeing him denounce Hitler's fascism then, in almost the same breath, rally against "Eye-ties" and "coloureds" is a fine parody of small-minded ignorance. This is a man who gleefully cries, "get a bit of action now" at the outbreak of the Second World War. A man who proffers "Ugly, innit?" at the birth of his own daughter. On being told his daughter's mother-in-law goes to church every Sunday, he rants, "I said I was religious - I didn't say I was a bloody religious maniac!" Often it's the way he tells 'em. Other Alf philosophies include repressing student demonstrations with a plan to "bung that lot out to work at fourteen, same as they done in the old days". "Wasn't that bad," he says about Hitler, when deciding, with hindsight, that we should have joined forces with the Third Reich, "Had his faults."
Alf's the man who has an opinion on everything, no matter how ill informed, and regularly expresses it, preferably in a crowded pub, to anyone that will listen. Alf's only flexibility in his views is in having a photograph of Winston Churchill ready to take the place of Neville Chamberlain's when he resigns.
This form of satire takes risks and can be shocking - during the film Alf criticises the calibre of the Japanese after Hiroshima and insults the Pope. "The coon's got a sense o'humour" he declares of a young girl before collapsing in a drunken heap and plastering his daughter with beer at her wedding reception. A documentary on Mitchell's life saw him recount a tale of a man who approached him in the street, praising him for "having a go at them coons." Mitchell's response was "we were actually having a go at idiots like you." That said, while an elitist amusement, the fact that this material became such a mainstream hit means that real-life bigots will ultimately see it as a vindication of their views, making it questionable entertainment.
Working a half-hour sitcom into a feature-length narrative is inevitably hit and miss, though Speight must be praised for doing something new with the format rather than just crafting a triple-length episode. Where the series saw Alf tirading against 60s counterculture, the first half of the movie is a kind of pre-story, with Alf and Else in the middle of the blitz. The film's recreation of 40s England is well realised, even if editing in stock footage of aircraft disrupts the illusion somewhat. Direction by Norman Cohen is also often cleverer than you might expect for this type of material.
At the halfway mark we get a "nearly 20 years later" caption, taking us up to the present date and the series' timeline. A three-and-a-half-minute dream sequence in the final stages may seem like filler, but it was good enough for Chaplin in The Kid, so it gets by here. Maybe the problem with the central character is that Mitchell makes him so likeable in spite of himself. Some famous names offer support in the film - Brian Blessed, Bill Maynard, Geoffrey Hughes, Anthony Booth and Frank Thornton - but, other than Booth, none of them get much of a look in, this being Mitchell's film all the way.
The film version of Till Death Do Us Part is superior to the misguided sequel In Sickness and in Health, though slightly behind the '65 TV original. The first half of the movie lacks the ethical counterpoint of his Labour-voting ("Randy Scouse git!") son-in-law, yet still scores with Mitchell's classic study of loud-mouth stupidity.
The joke is Alf himself, not his views, and seeing him denounce Hitler's fascism then, in almost the same breath, rally against "Eye-ties" and "coloureds" is a fine parody of small-minded ignorance. This is a man who gleefully cries, "get a bit of action now" at the outbreak of the Second World War. A man who proffers "Ugly, innit?" at the birth of his own daughter. On being told his daughter's mother-in-law goes to church every Sunday, he rants, "I said I was religious - I didn't say I was a bloody religious maniac!" Often it's the way he tells 'em. Other Alf philosophies include repressing student demonstrations with a plan to "bung that lot out to work at fourteen, same as they done in the old days". "Wasn't that bad," he says about Hitler, when deciding, with hindsight, that we should have joined forces with the Third Reich, "Had his faults."
Alf's the man who has an opinion on everything, no matter how ill informed, and regularly expresses it, preferably in a crowded pub, to anyone that will listen. Alf's only flexibility in his views is in having a photograph of Winston Churchill ready to take the place of Neville Chamberlain's when he resigns.
This form of satire takes risks and can be shocking - during the film Alf criticises the calibre of the Japanese after Hiroshima and insults the Pope. "The coon's got a sense o'humour" he declares of a young girl before collapsing in a drunken heap and plastering his daughter with beer at her wedding reception. A documentary on Mitchell's life saw him recount a tale of a man who approached him in the street, praising him for "having a go at them coons." Mitchell's response was "we were actually having a go at idiots like you." That said, while an elitist amusement, the fact that this material became such a mainstream hit means that real-life bigots will ultimately see it as a vindication of their views, making it questionable entertainment.
Working a half-hour sitcom into a feature-length narrative is inevitably hit and miss, though Speight must be praised for doing something new with the format rather than just crafting a triple-length episode. Where the series saw Alf tirading against 60s counterculture, the first half of the movie is a kind of pre-story, with Alf and Else in the middle of the blitz. The film's recreation of 40s England is well realised, even if editing in stock footage of aircraft disrupts the illusion somewhat. Direction by Norman Cohen is also often cleverer than you might expect for this type of material.
At the halfway mark we get a "nearly 20 years later" caption, taking us up to the present date and the series' timeline. A three-and-a-half-minute dream sequence in the final stages may seem like filler, but it was good enough for Chaplin in The Kid, so it gets by here. Maybe the problem with the central character is that Mitchell makes him so likeable in spite of himself. Some famous names offer support in the film - Brian Blessed, Bill Maynard, Geoffrey Hughes, Anthony Booth and Frank Thornton - but, other than Booth, none of them get much of a look in, this being Mitchell's film all the way.