I Watch Films: Confessions Of A Window Cleaner

 

Confessions Of A Window Cleaner

Timothy Lea joins his brother-in-law Sid*’s window cleaning firm. Sid tells him to make sure his clients are completely satisfied. As they are mostly lonely housewives at home while their husbands are at work, he’s supposed to be a gigolo.

Lea, accident prone, goes through a variety of more-or-less amusing sex comedy routines. The plot is enlivened by his pursuit of policewoman Elizabeth, who refuses to have sex with him until he eventually proposes. This is also the source of some more-or-less amusing family comedy scenes, including Sid’s wife being pregnant, his father working at the lost-and-found office and bringing home various ridiculous items (and being worried when Elizabeth, in uniform, turns up on the doorstep).

It's a 1970s British sex comedy when you could get a lot of mileage from showing some boobs or a bum, and from having to run away from a returning husband in your underwear. Though they also play with expectations, including when Lea, hiding from a man, is revealed and introduced as the client’s husband – causing the landlord who has been seeking payment in kind to run away.

Watch This: For some bawdy fun, with a handful of good jokes
Don’t Watch This: It’s mostly cheap voyeurism and slapstick

* Played by Tony Booth, perhaps best known as Prime Minister Tony Blair’s father-in-law