John Cleese makes suppressed anger visible in the way a man stands. We rate him highest in Fawlty Towers, where the writing and the supporting players are precise enough to make every small loss of dignity count.
Fi1m perspective
Basil Fawlty is funny before he has done much more than stand upright. In Fawlty Towers (1975), John Cleese makes the effort to stay civil visible in a body held too stiffly. We laughed before the outburst because that posture had already made his effort ridiculous. He gives Basil enough dignity to try to hang on to, then takes his time over the loss of it.
The move from the sketches of Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969) to Fawlty Towers gave that frustration longer to build. Cleese left the Python television series in 1973 but continued in the films, including Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) and Life of Brian (1979). He later wrote and starred in A Fish Called Wanda (1988), playing Archie Leach. Later film and voice roles included the Harry Potter and Shrek series, but our recommendation rests on the comedy he helped to write.
Writing with Connie Booth, Cleese makes each new hotel difficulty clear before Basil complicates it. Prunella Scales gives Sybil a steadiness that makes his agitation look foolish without reducing her to a supplier of rebukes. Booth's Polly attends to practical problems while he struggles to preserve appearances. He is well served by colleagues who remain busy with their own characters rather than merely waiting for him to finish.
Directors John Howard Davies and Bob Spiers keep those other performances in view rather than treating them as pauses between Basil's outbursts. Editors Susan Imrie, Bob Rymer and Bill Harris leave room for the waits and reactions. Their work lets us anticipate embarrassment without losing track of the immediate problem. Cleese's physical precision benefits from equally careful staging and cutting; we can see the effect he has on the people around him.
The caveat is the treatment of Andrew Sachs's Manuel, whose careful timing sometimes serves jokes that go on being cruel after they have made their point. Cleese is more engaging when Basil's dignity is at risk than when somebody else merely has to endure him. We would start with Fawlty Towers for the effort Basil puts into not shouting. Do not mistake the eventual volume for the whole performance.
Biography
John Cleese is an English actor, comedian and writer. He began his career performing at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and as a scriptwriter and performer on The Frost Report. In the late 1960s he joined the Monty Python comedy troupe, appearing in and writing for the sketch series Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969) and the films Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) and Life of Brian (1979).
In the mid-1970s Cleese co-wrote and starred as Basil Fawlty in the sitcom Fawlty Towers (1975) with his then-wife Connie Booth. He later appeared in A Fish Called Wanda (1988) and Fierce Creatures (1997), and voiced roles in the Shrek films. He has also appeared in two Harry Potter films as Nearly Headless Nick and in two James Bond films.
