French Dressing is a 1964 British comedy film directed by Ken Russell (in his feature directorial debut) and starring James Booth, Marisa Mell and Roy Kinnear.
[5] Jim Stephens is a deckchair attendant working in the flagging seaside resort town of Gormleigh in a job secured for him by his friend, the entertainments manager Henry Liggott.
Things are soon turned upside down when Judy writes an article at Jim's suggestion calling for a film festival featuring Brigitte Bardot to revitalise the town and bring in tourists.
With the mayor's approval, Stephens and Liggott travel across the Channel on the Medway Queen to persuade her to attend the planned film festival.
They then find that Fayol is frustrated by being typecast as a sex symbol rather than being given more intellectual roles and wishes to break free from her domineering mentor.
The floats depict: King Harold getting an arrow in the eye at the Battle of Hastings; Madame Guillotine; and French art.
When the film festival opens, it turns out to be a roaring success as tourists and the media flock in, attracted almost entirely by Fayol's presence and the glamour that comes in her wake.
The finale of the festival features the screening of Fayol's new film Pavements of Boulogne, followed the next morning by the opening of a new nudist beach.
Fayol is extremely nervous about her new film, as she hates seeing herself on screen, and is eager to win the main prize at the festival – the golden cockle.
Things at first seem to be going well at the screening until the show is suddenly disrupted by a violent brawl organised by the jealous mayors of rival towns.
Despite a desperate rush to the railway station by Liggott to prevent her, she catches the train leaving the heroes urgently needing to find someone to take her place at the opening of the town's first nudist beach.
Producer Kenneth Harper later said he "was tremendously impressed with his [Russell's] work on television and thought he would make a first class director.
Harper said he wanted Russell to make a Jacques Tati style comedy set at a "seedy English seaside resort.
"[8] Russell was keen to move out of the BBC and said the treatment (by Summer Holiday writers Cass and Myers) "was promising" and agreed to direct.
"[9] Russell said he was overwhelmed by the concept of actors talking to each other on film "I used to watch in open mouthed wonder and admiration every time it happened.
"[15] Russell said the film "featured the opening of a nudist beach, which only escaped the censors as it took place in a torrential rainstorm in extreme longshot.
The direction has a sub-Richardson flavour about it, and the film, aiming at a blend of wit and lyricism, achieves only an undisciplined mixture of buffoonery, fantasy and sentimentality.
"[23] Reflecting on the film in his 1994 memoir, The Lion Roars, Russell said: "Like oil and vinegar, the ingredients didn't mix.
A script by a couple of West End review writers didn't jell with the images concocted by an arty director from TV making his first feature."
There are a few visual gags, mostly at the expense of the mayor and corporation, but there's only so much comedy you can wring out of extras in top hats and tails making fools of themselves on a beach with buckets and spades and Hula-Hoops.
[25] Oliver Berry writes that, while it "aims to satirise the St Tropez-French Riviera scene by relocating it to Gormleigh-on-Sea", the outcome is "more reminiscent of Benny Hill than Buster Keaton".