And now for something completely the same...

And Now for Something Completely Different (1971)

The first Monty Python film was made inbetween the second and third seasons of the Monty Python's Flying Circus TV series. It is essentially a compilation of sketches from the first two seasons, with only a tiny quantity of new material (which makes the chosen title somewhat ironic). Because of this it can get overlooked in the history of Monty Python, and is considered much less of a creative effort than their later films where the reverse was true.

But while the sketches were not written for the film, they were all remade from scratch, with no footage from the TV series reused. This would hardly have been possible even had it been desirable, since the film is in a different aspect ratio from the series. This allowed the Monty Python team to make some script changes, and many visual changes, which means there is some interest to be found in comparing these second versions of the sketches to their originals.

And Now for Something Completely Different starts with "How not to be seen" from towards the end of the second season of the TV show. This very closely follows the original at first, then becomes increasingly abbreviated after the three bushes are blown up, and it ends with the narrator laughing maniacally. He is then revealed to be John Cleese as his announcer character, sat at a desk, who says

"And now for something completely different..."

(clang!) which leads straight into the animated titles. This means there is no It's Manny, a curious omission of one of Monty Python's most familiar and iconic characters.

The title sequence (which, as you might expect, is completely different from any version of the TV show's titles, though done in Terry Gilliam's familiar style) is immediately followed by a caption reading "The End."

 

The "Dirty Hungarian phrasebook" sketch is the first filmed sketch where the original was made on videotape in the studio, so the difference is so much more apparent. The courtroom scene is cut down significantly, but is then followed by a new bit (i.e. that wasn't in the TV version of the sketch) where a city gent (Graham Chapman) understands the Hungarian tourist (Terry Jones) perfectly well despite his using the nonsensical phrasebook.

The Marriage Guidance Counsellor sketch - originally seen all the way back in the second episode of season one - looks very different on film, despite using a very similar script. There's an incongruous photo of the then-prime minister Edward Heath in the background of the office. The ending is improved upon, where it is Cleese as the Voice of God that speaks to Arthur Pewtey instead of a random American gentlemanny, and then the 16 ton weight dropping on him I've always found much funnier than just being slapped by the knight with the chicken.

The Gilliam animations that are interspersed between the live action sketches have all been redone for the film but generally stick pretty closely to the originals, save in the new ways in which they follow each other and link together. This helps differentiate them from the TV series versions, more so than just them looking slightly different.

"Nudge, Nudge" is one where the script seems to me to be identical, so it hasn't improved any. It links in to the self defence against fresh fruit sketch, which is also very close to the TV version but only goes up to the point where Cleese, as the instructor, shoots Chapman and eats the banana. Being on film does seem to improve this sketch, perhaps because of all the close-ups of Cleese's mad face. It then cuts to Chapman as the Colonel complaining about the tendency for "this film to become silly."

The film's Hells Grannies contains all the essential elements of the sketch, but has been much more tightly edited.

The animation of The Spot retains the word "cancer" which was so obviously redubbed in the TV series. Ironically this makes it less funny, even if it is truer to the creator's vision.

The mountaineering sketch is here almost in full (although it wisely skips the split-screen punchline that was so poorly done in the original), and is a clearly superior version.

Conrad Poohs and his Dancing Teeth are followed by Eric Idle's sleazy "Peephole Club" compère introducing the musical mice sketch. Idle is clearly dubbing over himself when he calls back to Conrad Poohs, which makes me wonder if this was a late change from this linking bit having previously been supposed to follow a different sketch? The enraged audience pursuit of Jones as the mouse organist is used as a linking device for several sketches, as they chase him across the opening or closing of an otherwise unrelated scene.

In the funniest joke in the world sketch, Michael Palin as "Ernest Scribbler" clearly writes something on the paper when he composes the killer joke. I wonder if it would be possible to get a high enough resolution on that scene to be able to read what he's written? Mind you, it might not be a good idea to do so, mew. This is another sketch where only the essentials have been kept, tightening it up.

The Killer Cars animation adheres closely to the TV animation at first, but after the giant (and long) cat eats the building it gets an entirely new ending, with a narrator describing scenes that "could never in your life been seen in a low budget film like this."

The Parrot Sketch has a much more realistic looking parrot, although the TV version set a very low bar for it to clear. Apart from the look of the thing, the script used sticks closely to the original right up until the point where it suddenly transitions into the lumberjack song. I used to think this was done pretty seamlessly, considering they were originally from entirely separate episodes of the TV show, but now I can see that it's just a sharp turn from one script into another as the Parrot Sketch gets abandoned within the space of two or three lines. I do still like Cleese shouting

"What about my bloody parrot?"

from offscreen as Palin does the preamble to the song. The song itself looks much better on film, rather than the cheap backdrop of the studio original, but I note the final lyric has been changed from

"I wish I'd been a girlie,

Just like my dear mama."

to 

"I wish I'd been a girlie,

Just like my dear papa."

(and it's definitely this, because since Palin sings it twice it's easy to check) which seems to me to be a pointless change that doesn't make it any funnier. At least when the German version changed it to "uncle Walter" this was necessitated by the need for it to rhyme in that language.

The restaurant sketch with the dirty fork is another one, like with the self defence sketch earlier, which is enhanced by being on film with close ups of Cleese et al, although the background extras are perhaps doing a bit too good of a job in ignoring the action taking place only a table away from them - particularly once Mungo gets violent.

The robbery of the lingerie shop is an odd inclusion for this film since it is such a weak sketch to begin with, although John Cleese does at least appear to have learned his lines this time, unlike in the TV show where he seemed to be having some difficulty. This is followed by another of the weaker sketches - the office-based one where people keep falling past the window - so maybe this is just a section towards the end of the film where they decided to bung all of the weakest material?

The Vocational Guidance Counsellor sketch is improved from having the script tightened up a little, as well as by way of the short piece of stock footage of the lion that cuts sharply to Palin's scream of terror.

The biggest improvement between TV and film versions comes in Blackmail, which is an all-round more polished production both in the studio and location-filmed pieces. On the other paw we have the "Batley Townswomen's Guild's re-enactment of 'The Battle of Pearl Harbor'" which is just as unfunny as it was the first time.

"The Upper-Class Twit of the Year" seems to me like an odd choice for a final sketch - it's not that it's bad, just that there are plenty of better sketches that I would have thought more deserving of being the grand finale. Perhaps this was chosen because it has significant roles for all five of the main acting Pythons, plus a couple of opportunities for Gilliam to cameo?

The end credits are done in an imaginative style that combines them with some classic Gilliam animations, which keeps things interesting to the very The End.

The real The End this time.

While many of the classic Monty Python's Flying Circus sketches are represented here (and I suspect a number of them may be better recognised from here than from the TV originals), there are enough of the lesser sketches also present that the omission of some of the team's best material becomes glaring. The two I miss the most are the Ministry of Silly Walks and the Spanish Inquisition, which I would certainly have expected to make the cut.

The exclusion of the latter of these might be explained when we consider the lack of any multi-part sketches in the film - even sketches which had multiple parts in the TV show (Parrot Sketch; Dirty Hungarian Phrasebook) have only one part included here. While there's not exactly no continuity between sketches at all (the fleeing mouse organist linking a pawful of sketches is about as much as it gets), it does end up feeling less ambitious than an average episode of the second season.

Combine that with the lack of any visual effects worth speaking of - certainly nothing like the experimental combinations of live action actors with animation seen in the TV series - and the line "could never in your life been seen in a low budget film like this" begins to take on the ring of truth. Even the missing second Sir George Head at the ending of the mountaineering sketch takes on a new perspective when thought of in this way - missed out not to improve the punchline, but to save on the expense of the split-screen effect.

That this film was made as something of a low-budget cash-grab by the producers has been documented in a number of behind-the-scenes accounts - see The Pythons Autobiography by the Pythons, for instance, or Chapman's A Liar's Autobiography volume vi. Their expecting this to "break America" was wildly optimistic, to say the least. And Now for Something Completely Different is destined always to live in the shadow of both the Flying Circus TV series and the other Monty Python films with good reason - it being really neither one thing nor the other.