Barnacle Bill is a 1957 Ealing Studioscomedy film, starring Alec Guinness. He plays an unsuccessful Royal Navy officer and six of his maritime ancestors. This was the final Ealing comedy, and the last film Guinness made for Ealing Studios. His first Ealing success was in Kind Hearts and Coronets, in which he also played multiple roles. The film was written by the screenwriter of Passport to Pimlico.
Plot
William Horatio Ambrose wants desperately to live up to the proud family tradition; the Ambroses have always been mariners, hence their family motto, "Omnes per Mare". In humorous vignettes, Guinness portrays six of his ancestors, starting with a confused caveman perpetually going in circles in his coracle and ending with his own father's ignominious demise at the Battle of Jutland. Ambrose has a debilitating problem however: he suffers from violent seasickness. As a result, his contribution to the Second World War consists of testing cures for the malady. When he retires from the Royal Navy as a captain, he purchases a dilapidated late Victorian eraamusement pier with his life savings. The workers are an apathetic bunch, led by an insolent Figg, who quits as soon as the new owner begins imposing some semblance of discipline. With the assistance of his new second-in-command, a former RN rating named Tommy, and much hard work with help by a group of bored local teenagers, Ambrose soon has the pier repaired. Then he has to deal with the localtown council, headed by the crooked Mayor Crowley and the hostile Arabella Barrington, who mistakes him for a Peeping Tom when they first meet. Every time he comes up with an ingenious way to make his business profitable, they see to it that the council outlaws it. When Crowley decides to confiscate and demolish Ambrose's pier and Barrington's bathing huts to further his own business interests, she resigns from the council and informs Ambrose. He counters by registering his property as a "foreign" naval vessel, under the flag of convenience of the easygoing country of "Liberama", which puts it outside the town's jurisdiction. He soon attracts many happy, paying passengers for his stationary inaugural "cruise". Thwarted, Crowley hires Figg to take his dredger and demolish the structure late at night. Using a seasickness remedy suggested by Barrington, Ambrose is able to take to sea and foil the scheme, but in the process, part of the pier becomes detached and floats away. He remains aboard to prevent salvagers from claiming it and drifts over to France, where he is hailed as a naval hero.
Guinness appeared in the film as a favour to the director. In later years, however, he recalled it as "wretched, ... I never wanted to do and only did out of friendship to Charley Frend." Although Barnacle Bill was the last Ealing comedy, it was shot at Hunstanton Pier and Borehamwood Studios, as Ealing Studios had closed and was sold to the BBC for television production.
Reception
“Barnacle Bill” opened at the Empire Cinema in London on the 11 December 1957 and was later released with the title “All At Sea” in America. Barnacle Bill as All at Sea was reviewed in The New York Times by Bosley Crowther. His review was sympathetic to the failings of the film and script but he did see redeeming qualities in Guinness's performance. "Mr. Clarke's whimsical notion doesn't sail quite the untroubled sea that Mr. Guinness' pier does. It runs into roughness, now and then, which requires rather diligent overacting and farcical behavior by all hands. But Mr. Guinness, who has made an art of underplaying, never goes too far overboard..."
Box office
According to MGM records above, the film cost $659,000 to make and earned $405,000 in the US and Canada, plus $545,000 elsewhere, resulting in a return on investment of 44%, and a profit of $291,000.
