Comedy Review || The Plank (1967)

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British slapstick holds a medium of originality, in the case of The Plank (1967), there are scenes immortalised with the spirit of Tommy Cooper and Eric Sykes, as well as a host of other comedy stars or stars to be. The story is based around workmen attempting to transport a single plank across the town so they can finish a floor, the former plank went missing after the character of Eric Sykes burned it in a fire. Each scene comprises the setup of jokes with punchlines. The short film is about 40 minutes long and is based on an episode of Syke's comedy series entitled 'Sykes and a Plank' from 1964; a lot of episodes in this series followed the same 'Sykes and a...' foundation. By itself it works well even without knowledge of affiliations with older content because of its good natured pure humour, not to mention its value as a comedy.

Silent comedy seems to play a big part in this, the jokes speak for themselves in many cases indicating a kind of primitive meta narrative structure that related back to the audience of the time. Grunts and nondistinct mumbling make up a lot of communication which would imply that the comedy was intended to be purely physical, furthermore, it lends itself to viewers by providing a blank template of characters with no real voice. Basic setting can be seen in the environment in which it is filmed which lends it a distinctly domestic vibe. Eventually this film became a sort of cultural icon for British humour as it supposedly effected the overall mood of the era and defined a generation. 

Sticking it to authority, a trope of slapstick, is clearly illustrated by the presence of a fat policeman that pursues the troubling workmen on a bike. He finds himself in all sorts of sticky situations to do in pursuit of the main two perpetrators. When he is first introduced, he emerges yawning from a police station just as he sees the result of the last skit involving a man and a plank drive by shouting 'help!'. Almost reluctantly he mounts a bike in pursuit while struggling to get onto the seat. The whole scene puts the police in a bad light that would seem to show their complete incompetence, but it is merely a mode of schadenfreude, where we revel in others misery.

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It was clearly aimed at the lower working class; as consumerism began to grow during the early 20th century, more people were able to see films and watch television. The context of The Plank clearly shows in its context a familiar scene of a 'London Suburb' Kingston-upon-Thames in Surrey to be exact. Nowadays Surrey is known to film makers as the county home of Shepperton studios, owned by British company Pinewood. British pride around the film making community is important to production quality, as it defines a certain style that only a certain community can create involving nostalgia. The same could be said of other film making companies originating from other countries, Russia has its own style of comedy that only Russians could understand and enjoy, because its their version of nostalgia. An example based around the same time of The Plank can be found in a soviet TV miniseries called Seventeen Moments of Spring (1973) which follows the antics of a soviet spy in Nazi Germany, named Maxim Isaev. Nostalgia plays a role in preserving series for the future, although they inevitably date based on their historical events, they also maintain a sense of timelessness across generations. 

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Figures
fig 1. Sykes, E. (1967). The Plank. [film still]
fig 2. Sykes, E. (1967). The Plank. [film still]
fig 3. Sykes, E. (1967). The Plank. [film still]