Like another King Lear, old man Hobson, a widower, has three grown daughters to contend with. Unmarried (and unpaid), they work in his boot shop and do everything for him, freeing him up to go drinking with his buddies at the Moonraker pub on a daily basis. You’d think that Hobson was happy about this rather – for him – sweet set-up, but he moans and groans about how the daughters are becoming more and more domineering, and grumpily threatens to marry them off. The two youngest ones, anyway. This, in fact, is what the daughters want, so this drunkard daddy needs to be careful what he wishes for. The oldest daughter, Maggie, is 30, and Hobson is certain that she is past the marrying age and will continue to do his housewifing even if the younger ones go tie the knot. Maggie, however, is having none of that. Thinking very fast indeed, she makes plans to co-opt all of her father’s iffy intentions by speedily marrying his best boot-maker, leaving to set up a competing shop, organizing the marriage of the younger sisters to their chosen beaus, and essentially leaving Hobson no choices whatsoever except the final and coerced one of sanctioning all of her choices.
Hobson’s Choice, with which I wasn’t previously familiar, turns out to be a supremely watchable and thoroughly delightful comedy with a fast pace and a Dickensian dialogue that keep you glued to the screen. It is a satire on the snobbery between classes, a send-up of the attitude that women should just do as they’re told, and a bitter-sweet portrayal of an obnoxious bourgeois patriarch who’s dying of alcoholism – or, as he terms it, his ”reasonable refreshments”. The actors are all very strong and lick their roles to perfection. Charles Laughton is the rather repulsive Hobson who richly deserves what he gets. Brenda de Banzie as Maggie makes an impression as a take-charge intelligent woman who acts with enlightened self-interest when the need arises and refuses to take no for an answer. However, John Mills as William Mossop, the unwitting boot-maker that Maggie sets upon, is surely the stand-out performance of the lot; a meek and unassuming man of no learning beyond his passion for boot-making, but harboring the potential for so much more, and who lives up to Maggie’s expectations once she has forcibly educated him in the worldly matters of business and marriage. A fine piece of acting, that. Not to mention another triumphant feather in the hat of seminal director David Lean.
Besides Laughton, the only actor in the cast whose name and face I recognised was Prunella Scales, who would, of course, go on to embody Sybil from Fawlty Towers. She, at age 21, plays Hobson’s youngest daughter, as well as the prettiest, and she is indeed quite awesomely beautiful; so much so that one feels compelled to seek out more of her early work. She also performs her girlish yet haughty role rather impressively here; after all, as she says to excuse herself from housework, she’s ”got her looks to think of”. Indeed!
Another joyous element is the accents. Taking place in Salford, a borough of Greater Manchester, the movie is kept to perfection in sonorous Lancashire voices, where ”look” is pronounce like ”luke” and working class outbursts of shock come out like ”Oh My Gum!”
The new 60th anniversary Blu-ray is a beautifully remastered version of a movie that has indeed, as Scales says in a short accompanying interview, aged well and is not as dated as many others of that time. The disc also contains an interview with co-screenwriter Norman Spencer, and helpfully the main feature also has subtitles. The package, framing a movie which commendably accomplishes everything it sets out to, adds up to a release worthy of celebration.
Hobson’s Choice – 60th Anniversay Edition is released on Blu-ray and DVD in the UK on May 5.
Director: David Lean
Cast: Charles Laughton, Brenda de Banzie, John Mills, Daphne Anderson, Prunella Scales, Richard Wattis, Derek Blomfield and others.
Runtime: 108 min.
Country: UK
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