St Trinian's (film)

St Trinian's is a 2007 British comedy film and the sixth in a long-running series of British films based on the works of cartoonist Ronald Searle. The first five films form a series, starting with The Belles of St Trinian's in 1954, with sequels in 1957, 1960, 1966, and 1980. The 2007 release, coming 27 years after the last entry and 53 years after the first film, is a rebooting of the franchise, rather than a direct sequel, with certain plot elements borrowed from the first film. Whereas the earlier films concentrated on the adults, this film gives the school pupils greater prominence. St Trinian's is an anarchic school for uncontrollable girls run by eccentric headmistress Camilla Dagey Fritton (the reboot continues the tradition, established by Alastair Sim in the original film, of casting a male actor to play the female headmistress, with Rupert Everett inheriting the role). St Trinian's received mixed reviews.

Plot

St Trinian's School

St Trinian's was a British gag cartoon comic strip series, created and drawn by Ronald Searle from 1946 until 1952. The cartoons all centre on a boarding school for girls, where the teachers are sadists and the girls are juvenile delinquents. The series was Searle's most famous work and inspired a popular series of comedy films that has outlived the short-running cartoon series.

Concept

The first cartoon appeared in 1941, but shortly afterwards Searle had to fulfil his military service. He was captured at Singapore and spent the rest of the war as a prisoner of the Japanese. After the war, in 1946 he started making new cartoons about the girls, but the content was a lot darker in comparison with the previous years.

The school is the antithesis of the type of posh girls' boarding school depicted by Enid Blyton or Angela Brazil; its female pupils are bad and often well armed, and mayhem is rife. The schoolmistresses are also disreputable. Cartoons often showed dead bodies of girls who had been murdered with pitchforks or succumbed to violent team sports, sometimes with vultures circling; girls drank, gambled and smoked. It is reputed that the gymslip style of dress worn by the girls was closely modelled on the uniform of the school that Searle's daughter Kate attended, JAGS in Dulwich. The films implied that the girls were the daughters of gangsters, crooks, shady bookmakers, and other low-lifes and the institution is often referred to as a "female borstal".

St Trinian's 2: The Legend of Fritton's Gold

St Trinian's 2: The Legend of Fritton's Gold is a 2009 British adventure comedy film directed by Oliver Parker and Barnaby Thompson, both of who directed the previous film in the series. It is the seventh in a long-running series of films based on the works of cartoonist Ronald Searle, and the second film produced since the franchise was rebooted in 2007. A sequel, St Trinian's 3: Battle of the Sexes, has reportedly been in development since 2009, but has yet to be produced as of 2015.

Plot

One night, an unknown man telephones St. Trinian's and bribes a girl, Celia, to find an old ring in the school library. She is caught by the other girls, and forced to explain that the man offered her £20,000 for the ring. Annabelle, the new head girl of St. Trinian's, bartered for £100,000 from the man when he called back, but he refused and then proceeded to threaten them. Afterwards, the girls ask the headmistress, Camilla Fritton, about why the ring might be so valuable. She tells them a story about Pirate Fritton, her ancestor, who supposedly hid a great treasure somewhere in the world. He had two rings made, which when fitted together would reveal the location of the treasure.