MovieChat Forums > The Belles of St. Trinian's (1954) Discussion > Havoc and mayhew the St Trinian's way!

Havoc and mayhew the St Trinian's way!


Smoking & drinking seems be mandatory, for both students & staff, at St Trinian's. The other behavioural trait that is ripe at the school is gambling on the horses, everyone seems to do it including the school headmistress played by the cross-dressing Alastair Sim. When there's not a horse race to bet on, they bet on the inter-school girls hockey game & then vigorously decimate the opposing team to collect on the result. Of course this is the whole point, St Trinian's is the most chaotic, dysfunctional, fear-generating young ladies' school in the British Isles! The Belles of St Trinian's demonstrates all of the tropes that were characteristic in the succeeding films in the series - a total avoidance at St Trinian's of anything at all to do with school work & academic study in favour of a systematic approach to illegitimate "get-rich-quick" schemes; a bevy of curvy 6th formers (senior girls) who look & most probably are well into their 20s; hockey stick-wielding thugs in the guise of 1st & 2nd form girls; panic, fear & trembling setting in amongst the shopkeepers, the police & other townspeople who board up their windows & disappear from sight at the mere mention of "Cyclone St Trinian's"; the go-between for most of the dodgy activities of the girls, the dodgy Flash Harry (George Cole, decades before he took dodginess to a whole new level in Minder). The formulaic style of St Trinian's employed by Launder & Gilliat was a well-worn one. There was four more St Trinian's movies, widely spread out, after this, but we kind of got the idea of what it was all about from this one.
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