The new film Mrs Harris Goes to Paris is based on a 1958 novel by the American writer Paul Gallico: no British novelist could romanticise the class system quite so wackily. It is about the adventures of a Battersea char who, heartbroken by the death of her husband, saves up to buy a dress from the House of Dior.
She is a noble savage, a naïf, in a Hilda Ogden headscarf, whistling as she works. She goes to Paris and charms the unhappy and beautiful snobs who haunt the House of Dior. She teaches them her values, and the benefits of selling perfume as well as haute couture, and she saves the House of Dior. The Dior accountant learns to dream, the Dior model learns to follow her heart — she becomes an Existentialist — and the Dior seamstresses learn to unionise. Mrs Harris is the archetypal fairy godmother; except she doesn’t make the ball dress. The only people who don’t learn anything as the film unfolds are the customers.
