The discovery of rare minerals sees the British Foreign Office scramble to reassert control of a forgotten island colony.
Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Roy Boulting, Jeffrey Dell
Starring: Terry-Thomas, Peter Sellers, Luciana Paluzzi, Ian Bannen, Thorley Walters, Raymond Huntley, John Le Mesurier
Just a few years ago a 1950s British comedy like Carlton Browne of the F.O. might have seemed dated. However, America's current obsession with acquiring Greenland and a largely blissfully unaware British public suddenly discovering that Britain stills own the Chagos Islands have now made this 1959 colonial satire all-too timely.
Roy Boulting and Jeffrey Dell's film is centred on the fictional island of Gaillardia, which was a British colony until it gained its independence in 1916. The Brits forgot to inform their consulate, who has remained on the island under the belief that it's still under British control. Britain's Foreign Office is taken aback when they receive a letter from the long-forgotten outpost informing them of suspicions that a visiting Cossack dance troupe may actually be Russian spies interested in the mineral deposits that have recently been discovered on the island.
Though re-released as part of a celebration of the 100th birthday of Peter Sellers, Carlton Browne of the F.O. stars Terry Thomas in the lead role of the nebbish nepo baby who finds himself dispatched to Gaillardia in an attempt to re-exert British influence. As the head of the one-man department of "Miscellaneous Territories," Gaillardia is Browne's responsibility. Trouble is, he's not really one for responsibility, having landed the job solely because his father is a former ambassador.
Browne finds Gaillardia on the brink of civil war. His father having been killed in a bombing, the young Oxford-educated Loris (Ian Bannen) becomes the island's new king. Filled with progressive notions, the young king wants to improve the lot of Gaillardians. This puts him in conflict with his militaristic uncle (John Le Mesurier) and the island's scurrilous Prime Minister Amphibulos (Sellers). Browne's attempts to avert conflict only make things worse, and he finds himself in the middle of a war between the North and South of Gaillardia.
The production does a fine job of convincing us we're on a tropical island despite the film having been shot entirely in England, something greatly enhanced by Sellers' constant state of sweatiness. The portrayal of a barely functional banana republic on the edge of war plays like a precursor to Woody Allen's similarly themed 1971 satire Bananas. Sellers' role however is rather one-note and gives him little room to display the distinctive chameleonic comic chops he would quickly become known for.
The film's sharpest scenes are those that play out in England before we ever get to Gaillardia. It's a whip-smart satire of how post-colonial Britain quickly began to consider its former territories as little more than a nuisance, unless of course discoveries of exploitable resources made them suddenly of interest. Thomas is ideally cast as the civil servant whose cushy job unexpectedly requires him to actually do some work (when informed of his posting to Gaillardia, he complains that it means he will miss Ascot). He forms an amusing double act with Thorley Walters as a Colonel whose stiff upper lip becomes considerably relaxed once he sets his sights on Gaillardia's dancing girls.
After some fun ribbing of Gaillardia's ineptitude, the film gets a little too wrapped up in its civil war plot, and the jokes begin to dry up like a mango left in the tropical sun. A subplot concerning the young King's romance with a princess (Luciana Paluzzi) is nowhere near as interesting as the movie believes it to be, and merely proves a distraction from Thomas's central antics.
