The Pleasure Garden

There's something quite surreal about this quirky short film from James Broughton. It's all centred around an overgrown London park where the part-time warden/undertaker "Col. Gargoyle" (John Le Mesurier) spends his entire time putting up signs telling people what to do and what not to do - all the while being largely ignored by the people who use the space. No playing, no dancing, no singing, no running - they are all disregarded as this most eclectic mix of folks do everything from ballet to canoodling. It's presented as if it were a silent film with little dialogue - though Jean Anderson's "That's the best funeral I've been to all day" does stick in the mind. Hattie Jacques features - flamboyantly using her scarf as a garment and a useful conduit to "free" those bent on some degree of intimacy amongst the overgrown rhododendrons. Le Mesurier seems to have found an uniquely punitive use for an abandoned animal cage for the worst miscreants and we slowly build to quite a fun denouement between the forces of good (fun) and bad (rules). At times it can come across as what might be considered "racy" and there is plenty of semi-operatic singing to keep it flowing but there's no doubt that it's very much of it's time, and now serves as little more than a curio that sees the charismatic dynamic between the husband and wife Jacques and Le Mesurier convene an ensemble of slapstick lightheartedness.