Rent The Extra Day (1956)
- General info
- Available formats
- Synopsis:
- At the end of the final day of filming, one of the studio drivers loses the last can of film. The producer orders his assistant Joe Blake (Richard Basehart) to track down all five extras involved in the last scene, ensuring they are available the following morning for retakes. Joe knows them all: Steven Marlow (George Baker), ex-Commando officer; Barney West (Sidney James), a broken-down prize fighter; Mr. (Philip Ray) and Mrs. (Olga Lindo) Bliss, now retiring after 40 years in the profession; and Toni Howard (Josephine Griffin), a Society girl bored with Society. Visiting each in turn, he has a glimpse into their various private lives and fines comedy, drama and tragedy.
- Actors:
- Richard Basehart, Simone Simon, George Baker, Josephine Griffin, Colin Gordon, Laurence Naismith, Charles Victor, Sidney James, Joan Hickson, David Hannaford, Olga Lindo, Philip Ray, Jill Bennett, John Humphry, Dennis Lotis, Meier Tzelniker, Beryl Reid, Shani Wallis, Bryan Forbes, Eddie Byrne
- Directors:
- W.E. Fairchild
- Producers:
- E.M. Smedley-Aston
- Writers:
- W.E. Fairchild
- Studio:
- Network
- Genres:
- Classics, Comedy, Drama
- Collections:
- Getting to Know..., Getting to Know: Sidney James, The Golden Age of British Pop Musicals, A Brief History of Film...
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Reviews (1) of The Extra Day
On the Ropes - The Extra Day review by CH
Mention films that involve boxing, and one can be sure that certain titles are immediately mentioned. Among them is unlikely to be The Extra Day (1956) but its longest scene is a boxing match in which one of the participants is none other than Sid James. He is not only involved in a racket but the incident is a link with this being another film about filming.
Written and directed by William Fairchild, it turns around the final reel of a film being lost as it tumbles from a van between the set and the studio. Needs must, the choleric émigré director (Laurence Naismith) determines to round up the main cast and the others which makes for a punning title about another day’s shooting.
This sounds like a routine, even whimsical English comedy, but the cast, which also includes Bryan Forbes, Beryl Reid, Jill Bennett, Joan Hickson and Simone Simon, make much of the diverse plot lines which such a set-up involves as it moves between the fraught and the comic from moment to moment. There are continual surprises, the effect is far more surreal than one might expect at first - and room much be found for Dennis Lotis. In his time, pre-Cliff, he had become a good-looking figure on the English musical scene with a vocal style which owed something to Sinatra. Here he is the object of a Fan Club which goes wild in a way that anticipates Beatlemania (among them Beryl Reid). And he died only this year, at ninety-three, after a life whose turns could make for an enjoyable documentary if not a full-blown biopic.
Well worth your time.