Hobson's Choice: the choice of taking either the thing offered or nothing [after Thomas Hobson (1544-1631) of Cambridge, England, who rented horses, and obliged each customer to take in his turn the horse nearest the stable door or none at all.]

Here's nothing less than a delightful script with a great cast, deftly put together by a great director. It's a barrel of laughs and well worth a look-see. This is Victorian period comedy or farce that will be a delight for all those who enjoy films like the Jane Austen adaptations. Hobson's Choice boasts three great performances, any one of which would be worth the price of admissions. The feminists among you will especially enjoy this battle-of-the-sexes outing, since it's clearly most sympathetic to the female viewpoint.

Historical Background: David Lean (1908-1991) became one of the greatest British directors, despite growing up in a Quaker household that disdained films as "sinful." From his Quaker boarding schools, he found his way to local movie houses. He was determined, later, to make his way in the film industry and literally worked his way up from the bottom, starting as a "tea boy," then a clapper and messenger boy. He was editing newsreels by 1930 and feature films by 1934, including Pygmalion (1938). He co-directed the war film, In Which We Serve (1942), with Noel Coward, earning Best Film recognition in 1942 from the New York Film Critics' Circle (NYFCC). He then solo directed adaptations of three Coward plays. He had his first major success with Brief Encounter (1945), which won a Palme d'Or from Cannes, though in a year in which they gave out ten of them. He followed that success with two fine adaptations of Dickens novels, Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948). He then made a series of three films starring Ann Todd (who became his second of six wives). The last of those films, The Sound Barrier, received the British Academy (BAFTA) Award for Best Film and Best British Film, in 1952. The present film, Hobson's Choice (1954), came next and took the BAFTA award for Best British Film. (The Epinions database erroneously lists a 1983 television version of the film as the BAFTA winner, but it's tough for a film released in 1983 to win an award in 1954!) Summer Madness (1955), with Katharine Hepburn, was another success, earning Lean the Best Director award from the NYFCC. All of his films up to this point had consisted of intimate dramas.

Lean's focus changed abruptly with his next film, The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), which won the BAFTA awards for both Best Film and Best British Film as well as Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, and five other categories. It was an expensive superproduction with great box-office appeal, along with critical acclaim. Lean followed with four other spectacles, Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965), Ryan's Daughter (1970), and A Passage to India (1984). The last of those films received nine Oscar nominations, though it was beat out in the major categories by Amadeus. Lean was knighted in 1984 and received a Life Achievement Award from the American Film Institute in 1990.

The Story: Henry Horatio Hobson (Charles Laughton), like many a self-made Victorian era businessman, imagines himself as the king of his household. Though he's a widower, his household and boot shop are awash in estrogen. Hobson, you see, has three grown daughters in need of husbands. Hobson would like nothing more than to marry off the two younger ones, Alice (Daphne Anderson) and Vicky (Prunella Scales), except that he would be required to pay a "settlement" (dowry), as well as paying the cost of the wedding and bridal gown. Alice and Vicky aren't a lot of use in the shop anyway, being somewhat frivolous chatterboxes. The elder sister, Maggie (Brenda de Banzie), is another story altogether. Even her own father considers her "overripe" for marriage, at age thirty, and he's settled on her being an eternal spinster. Besides, she's indispensable to the operation of the business and the household and he doesn't even have to pay her. Alice and Vicky both have surreptitious suitors. Albert Prosser (Richard Wattis), a young lawyer, has his eye on Alice while Freddy Beenstock (Derek Blomfield), the son of a grain merchant, has his heart set on Vicky. Maggie has no prospects whatsoever, as her father is delighted to point out, as he announces his intentions to find husbands for Alice and Vicky.

Maggie may have no love life, but she's the real brains of the family. She takes her father's gratuitous insult as a challenge and declares, "I'm making plans, father, and a husband is included in them." Hobson is relieved to discover that she has no current prospect and declares that Maggie is merely entertaining every old maid's fantasy. He has badly underestimated his eldest daughter.

Mrs. Hepworth (Helen Haye), a wealthy customer, arrives at the shop, demanding to know who made the boots she is wearing. Hobson, who is for once deferent, assures her that he is prepared to make amends for any inadequacy in the goods, but Mrs. Hepworth persists in her demand to confront the laborer responsible for these particular boots, in person. The meek Willie Mossop (John Mills), a leatherworker, is duly hauled up from the basement shop. To everyone's surprise and relief, Mrs. Hepworth declares her boots to be the finest she's ever purchased and Mossop an exceptional craftsman. She demands that if he ever changes jobs, he notify her immediately, since she is determined to buy, in the future, only boots made by Mossop. Furthermore, she will send her daughters and friends to the Hobson boot shop as well. After Mrs. Hepworth leaves, Hobson grumbles that she should know better than to compliment the hired help to his face.

The story takes its key turn when Hobson leaves for the evening, leaving Maggie to close up the shop. Hobson is on his way to his favorite watering hole, Moonrakers, where he hobnobs with other chauvinistic old fools. Maggie calls Willie up from the workshop and declares that she's had her eye on him for a while and that she's decided that he'll do just fine. She points out that his skill with his hands and her business acumen will be an unbeatable combination. Willie, who is illiterate and not the brightest cue ball on the planet struggles to understand her meaning, nervously hoping that she's talking about business partnership rather than the marriage kind. She informs him, matter-of-factly, that she means both. "I've been watching you for a long time and everything I've seen, I've liked. I think you'll do for me." She adds, "I'll tell you something, Willie. It's a poor sort of woman that'll stay lazy when she sees her best chance slipping from her." Willie, who is timid, deferential, illiterate, and lacking in ambition, can hardly believe that he's the best chance for his master's daughter. "Well, by gum," he says. "You're walking out with me, Peale Park, Sunday," says Maggie. That's the place in town where the public courtin' takes place.

Sunday, at Peale Park, Willie shows up in what is probably his only dress suit and a top hat. Maggie tells him that he's a natural at making boots and a natural fool at aught else. He declares that he's not in love with her. She says that they'll get along without it. He warns that it would upset the master. She says that she'll be the judge of that. He declares that there's another woman: Ada Figgins (Dorothy Gordon). Ada's a young lass from his own working class. Maggie demands to know where Ada lives and marches Willie right over there to break off any understanding he might have with Ada. Willie gets his ears boxed by Ada's mother, Mrs. Figgins (Madge Brindley), but, by the time they leave, Willie belongs to Maggie. In an alleyway, Maggie declares, "Now, you can kiss me, Willie." Willie replies, "That's forcing things a bit in all this, Maggie." "Come on, man, get it over," she says, but he can't quite pull it off.

Hobson receives the news of the impending marriage badly, especially when Maggie demands that he start paying her a wage. Later, Hobson takes a belt to Willie, which merely solidifies his commitment to Maggie. The first whack from Hobson provokes Willie to kiss Maggie on the cheek. One more and Willie and Maggie are walking out of Hobson's shop into their own destiny.

Maggie and Willie head over to Mrs. Hepworth's mansion, where Maggie uses her good business sense (with Willie as the collateral) to elicit a loan. Soon, Maggie and Willie have located a vacant shop, purchased leather and tools, and are circulating advertisements. Hobson and his drinking buddy have a good laugh over the idea of a woman running a business, but gradually the new Mossop shop is drawing away Hobson's business. Maggie begins to teach Willie how to read and write and sews him a new jacket. "Well goodnight, Maggie," says Will, "it's been a grand day." She kisses him and says, "You great soft thing." Mossop stares proudly at the sign on his new shop as he leaves, feeling a flush of self-esteem that he's never previously known.

Maggie stops by the old shop with an invitation to her wedding. Alice declares they won't be going, but Maggie insists. Meanwhile, life in the Hobson household is falling apart, causing Hobson to seek solace with increasing frequency through drinking binges at Moonrakers. On this night, he waddles out of the pub half-wasted and, in a beautifully filmed segment, takes to chasing after the full moon's reflection in puddles and windows. He ends up out cold in the grain storage bin at the Beenstock establishment.

The rest of the film is Maggie's show all the way. She plays her cards so skillfully that the old man is tricked into providing dowries for Alice and Vicky. Alice and Vicky get their husbands but are also forced into a reluctant show of respect for Willie, despite his working class roots. The film's highlight is the wedding night, which milks Willie's innocence and timidity for one laugh after another, until, finally, the reluctant stud marches into the bedroom to do his connubial duty. In the morning, the now fully smitten Willie can only declare, "By gum, Maggie," as he gazes on her adoringly.

The hard-drinking Hobson's alcoholism grows increasingly worse and the physician declares that he needs a woman to straighten him out. All three daughters are now married and neither Alice nor Vicky has any interest in becoming their father's caretaker. Hobson declares that Maggie and Willie can move into his home and Willie can have his old job back. Willie, however, now has a more successful business than Hobson. Propped up, as always, by Maggie's willpower, Willie presents Hobson with a take-it-or-leave-it alternative. The Hobson boot shop will become a partnership, "Mossop and Hobson," with Willie and Maggie in full control of its operation. Hobson is thus duly presented with "Hobson's choice."

Themes: Maggie Hobson attacks the problem of potential eternal spinsterhood with all of the acumen and determination of a good businesswoman. She sets her sights on Willie Mossop and methodically closes the deal. She is the kind of dominant woman that men and feminists can equally admire, not cruel or repressive to the man in her life, but empowering to him even as she is empowered herself. She honestly judges Mossop for both his strengths and his weaknesses, acknowledges and enables his strengths, and complements his weaknesses with her own acumen. Willie seems genuinely happy to be subservient to Maggie because he understands that she recognizes and amplifies his human worth, even as he recognizes and amplifies hers. Maggie is the most likable kind of strong woman. She also exhibits great courage in challenging the constricts of a highly stratified society that would condemn her to a loveless life, by marrying a man beneath her in station, education, and breeding, but fully worthy of respect and admiration by dint of his skilled craftsmanship.

Production Values: The screenplay was based on an hilarious 1915 play by Harold Brighouse. There's plenty of sparkling banter and pithy dialog. The romance is very touching as well. The two peak scenes of the film are absolutely delightful – Hobson's inebriated encounter with the moon's reflection in a bunch of street puddles and Willie Mossop's monumental timidity at the prospect of joining his bride in bed on the wedding night. Lean perfectly balances the qualities of Laughton's character between contemptible and pitiable, to create a genuine pathos.

The visuals are beautifully rendered in crisp black-and-white by Jack Hildyard, who also worked with Lean on the epic The Bridge on the River Kwai. The Victorian settings are captured in all of their elegant charm. There's brilliant use of surrealism in reflecting the hallucinations experienced by Hobson, while in delirium tremens. The stage crew did a magnificent job recreating old Salford, England in all of its Victorian grandeur. The soundtrack is delightfully irreverent, as when a march number breaks out as Willie dutifully trudges into the bridal chamber.

This is a film with not one, but three, great performances. Charles Laughton's swaggers and fumes as the tyrannical shop owner. Full of self-pity, alternately blustering and whimpering, Laughton prances about as though he were truly in charge, while the selfless Maggie holds together both shop and home. Laughton is a marvel of physical humor, with his rotund torso and round, rubbery visage. Laughton's long resume includes such films as If I Had a Million (1932), The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934), Les Misérables (1935), Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), Man of the Eiffel Tower (1949), Witness for the Prosecution (1957), Spartacus (1960), and Advise and Consent (1962).

Brenda de Banzie plays her role for all its worth, as the competent, liberated, and independent woman, in a time when such concepts scarcely existed. Her dominance is of the maternal variety and only as severe as the circumstances require. De Banzie's other best roles were in A Kid for Two Farthings (1955), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), The Entertainer (1960), and The Pink Panther (1964). John Mills, a fine actor, plays the meek Willie Mossop, full of incredulous bewilderment when confronted by Maggie's daring-do. He grows, over the course of the film, under Maggie's tutelage, and Mills manages his character's development in a natural and credible way. The always delightful Mills performed in Goodbye Mr. Chips (1939), In Which We Serve (1942), Great Expectations (1946), War and Peace (1956), Swiss Family Robinson (1960), Ryan's Daughter (1970), Young Winston (1972), Gandhi (1982), and When the Wind Blows (1986).

There are also some fine supporting cast members. Viewers of British television will recognize Prunella Scales (Sybil in "Fawlty Towers"), who played Vicki. She's also appeared in such films as Howards End (1992). Daphne Anderson, who played Alice, previously appeared in The Beggar's Opera (1952).

Bottom-Line: This is a spunky film, jam-packed with witty dialog, eccentric characters, and touching good humor, sometimes worthy of howls. The acting by Laughton, de Banzie, and Mills is all first-rate and the direction is superlative. This charming film ranks as one of the finest in black-and-white by director David Lean. Though Lean is most remembered for the spectacular color epics from the latter part of his career, viewers will find equal delights in his earlier black-and-white chamber pieces. Hobson's Choice is in English with a running time of 107 minutes.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: Good Date Movie
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older