Brilliant, entrancing, exhausting, and with thermonuclear showtunes from Richard and Robert Sherman, Disney’s hybrid live-action/animation classic from 1964 is now rereleased on home entertainment platforms for its 60th anniversary. And it has a brand-new certificate from the BBFC: upgraded from a U to a PG on account of “discriminatory language” from the eccentric seadog character Admiral Boom, who fires a cannon from his roof shouting “Fight the Hottentots!” (an obsolete term for South Africa’s indigenous Khoekhoe people). However the BBFC is evidently not bothered by the foxhunting scene in which the fox has a cod Irish accent (perhaps because chimney sweep Bert, played by Dick Van Dyke, saves the fox), nor by the cheerful suicide reference made by one of the servants: “Nice spot there by Southwark Bridge, very popular with jumpers!”
In an upmarket part of Edwardian London created on almost dreamlike artificial sets in California, the prosperous upper-middle-class Banks family are having problems controlling their high-spirited children, Michael (Matthew Garber) and Jane (Karen Dotrice); this is grumpy banker George Banks (David Tomlinson) and his suffragette wife Winifred (Glynis Johns), who is always whirling around going to votes-for-women marches. Pompous Mr Banks saunters into the action with complacent song The Life I Lead (which melodically owes a tiny bit to With a Little Bit of Luck from the stage show My Fair Lady).
And so the magical nanny Mary Poppins wafts miraculously down from the heavens to solve all their problems – and this is the glorious movie debut of Julie Andrews, glowing with health and beauty and confidence. Andrews will always be associated with this superb performance, and of course her later appearance in The Sound of Music, in which she also artlessly cures a family’s woes. I have always preferred Andrews in The Sound of Music, because defying the Nazis is more exciting and worthwhile than wimpishly going on a jolly holiday, and feeding the (verminous) birds at tuppence a bag etc. But no one can doubt the lethal power of Mary Poppins. (Naming Mary’s preferred alcoholic cocktail is always a great film quiz standby.)
But when uptight Mr Banks takes the kids to his place of employment and young Michael inadvertently causes the biggest run on a bank since Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life, this stern paterfamilias loses his position and is forced to consider his whole life and how he has been neglecting his children in favour of work (although happily it’s not a quandary he’s in for very long).
It is Mary who introduces the children to the madcap chimney sweep Bert, played by Van Dyke with his notoriously awful cockney accent – which is even more awful considering that Hermione Baddeley is right there, robustly playing the Banks family’s maid Ellen, and giving us a much more convincing London voice. (Actually, Van Dyke’s posh voice as old Mr Dawes is much better.) From the first time I saw this film as a kid, and again now, I have always wondered: are Bert and Mary in love or not? Mary sings to him: “Gentlemen like you are few / Though you’re just a diamond in the rough, Bert / Underneath, your blood is blue / You’d never think of pressing your advantage / Forbearance is the hallmark of your creed / A lady needn’t fear when you are near …” Pressing his “advantage”? A lady not needing to fear? Well, I should hope not, though perhaps poor Bert certainly does have a hopeless platonic thing for Mary, possibly the most romantically unattainable figure in film history. She is also arguably a manic pixie dream nanny, though it’s Bert who is also manic, particularly when he does his interminable Step in Time rooftop knees-up with all the other sweeps.
There are lots of genius moments here, and A Spoonful of Sugar and Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious are amazing songs. I have to admit that I find the real brilliance of the film is in the first act and things have wound down by the end, but what an entertainment sugar rush.
• Mary Poppins is in UK cinemas from 29 March, and also screening in select Australian cinemas.
