Perfect Friday is a fairly obscure film released in 1970 and directed by Peter Hall, better known for his work in the theatre. The cast is impressive and is led by Ursula Andress, Stanley Baker, and David Warner, with T.P. Mckenna, Garfield Morgan, and Julian Orchard also in attendance. The writers, less renowned, were Anthony Greville-Bell and Scott Forbes, and they came up with a screenplay that is uneven to say the least. But the result is very watchable.
This is a bank heist film which teeters between comedy and drama, with some tense moments as well as one or two unexpected developments. Baker is an assistant manager at a bank, highly respectable but bored. We learn nothing much about his background and life, but when he meets Andress, his fate is sealed. He falls for her and they have an affair. He also wants to conspire with her to rob a bank. She is, however, married, to Warner, and they rope the husband into their little plot. But it's a scenario ripe for betrayal and I could see the final, by no means original, twist coming a mile off.
Before we got to that point, however, there was some enjoyable entertainment. Baker's plan involves taking advantage of the absence from the office of the senior manager to con McKenna's character (Baker's immediate superior) into believing that Warner is actually an envoy from head office, sent over to inspect the money in the bank vault. This part of the story is ingenious and well presented.
The lack of depth in the characterisation, coupled with Warner's innate eccentricity, mean that it's hard to take the key players seriously, even though Baker - as usual - delivers a strong performance. The score is by John Dankworth, but although he was a notable film composer, I found his jaunty themes intrusive. I suspect Hall wasn't quite sure what sort of film he was going to make, while the writers also seem to have been uncertain in their approach. So Perfect Friday is not a complete success, but the ingredients are genuinely interesting.
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