The Crimson Permanent Assurance
Encyclopedia
The Crimson Permanent Assurance is a short film that plays as the beginning of the feature-length motion picture Monty Python's The Meaning of Life. Although it is presented as a separate film, and is sometimes shown without the feature, it can also be considered a prologue to The Meaning of Life, which is almost never shown without
The Crimson Permanent Assurance preceding it.
Having originally conceived the story as a 6-minute animated
sequence in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, intended for placement at the end of Part V, Terry Gilliam
convinced the other members of Monty Python
to allow him to produce and direct it as a live-action piece instead.
According to Gilliam, the film's rhythm, length, and style of cinematography made it a poor fit as a scene in the larger movie, so it became "Our Short Feature Presentation", to be shown ahead of the "Main Feature".
It was a common practice in British cinemas to show an unrelated short feature before the main movie, a holdover from the older practice of showing a full-length "B" movie ahead of the main feature. By the mid-1970s the short features were of poorer quality, or simply banal travelogues. As a kind of protest, the Pythons had already produced one spoof travelogue narrated by John Cleese
, Away from It All, which was shown before The Life of Brian in Britain.
The film includes actor Matt Frewer
's debut performance.
employees of the Permanent Assurance
Company, a staid London
firm which has recently been taken over by the Very Big Corporation of America, rebel against their corporate masters when one of them is sacked
. Having locked the surviving supervisors in the safe, and forced their boss to walk a makeshift plank out a window, they commandeer their Edwardian office building, which suddenly weighs anchor, uses its scaffolding and tarpaulins as sails, and is turned into a pirate ship. The stone office building starts to move as if it were a ship. Sailing through the City of London
, they then proceed to attack The Very Big Corporation of America's skyscraper, using, among other things, wooden filing cabinet
s which have been transformed into carronade
s and swords fashioned from the blades of a ceiling fan. On ropes, they swing into the board room and engage the executives of VBCA in hand-to-hand combat, vanquishing them.
After their hard-earned victory, the clerks continue to "sail the wide accountan-cy" (as they sing in their heroic sea shanty
), until unceremoniously meeting their (now-animated) end by falling off the edge of the world
.
Typical of how Pythons would weave previously 'terminated' plot lines into later scenes of the same episode (like Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition in the TV show, or the recurring theme of the swallows carrying coconuts in the movie Holy Grail
), The Crimson Permanent Assurance suddenly re-emerges in the middle of the main feature of Monty Python's The Meaning of Life. After the donor scene, the movies shifts to follow a modern board room debate about the meaning of life (and that people are not wearing enough hats). This debate is happening at the Very Big Corporation of America headquarters building in the same room that witnessed the battle in the short film. The debate is halted when one executive asks, "Has anyone seen that building?" which turns out to be the marauding old London building/pirate ship of the Crimson Permanent Assurance. The audience gets to see briefly the attack of the pirates from the angle of the victims in the board room. The raid is halted by a modern skyscraper falling onto the moving Permanent Assurance Company building; with a voice-over apologizing for the temporary interruption "due to an attack by the supporting feature". The scene could be considered a "deleted scene
" from the original short, the executives in the VBCA board room are shown discussing the meaning of life (and the fact that people are not wearing enough hats), immediately before the raid.
The Very Big Corporation of America:
The Crimson Permanent Assurance preceding it.
Having originally conceived the story as a 6-minute animated
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
sequence in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, intended for placement at the end of Part V, Terry Gilliam
Terry Gilliam
Terrence Vance "Terry" Gilliam is an American-born British screenwriter, film director, animator, actor and member of the Monty Python comedy troupe. Gilliam is also known for directing several films, including Brazil , The Adventures of Baron Munchausen , The Fisher King , and 12 Monkeys...
convinced the other members of Monty Python
Monty Python
Monty Python was a British surreal comedy group who created their influential Monty Python's Flying Circus, a British television comedy sketch show that first aired on the BBC on 5 October 1969. Forty-five episodes were made over four series...
to allow him to produce and direct it as a live-action piece instead.
According to Gilliam, the film's rhythm, length, and style of cinematography made it a poor fit as a scene in the larger movie, so it became "Our Short Feature Presentation", to be shown ahead of the "Main Feature".
It was a common practice in British cinemas to show an unrelated short feature before the main movie, a holdover from the older practice of showing a full-length "B" movie ahead of the main feature. By the mid-1970s the short features were of poorer quality, or simply banal travelogues. As a kind of protest, the Pythons had already produced one spoof travelogue narrated by John Cleese
John Cleese
John Marwood Cleese is an English actor, comedian, writer, and film producer. He achieved success at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and as a scriptwriter and performer on The Frost Report...
, Away from It All, which was shown before The Life of Brian in Britain.
The film includes actor Matt Frewer
Matt Frewer
Matthew "Matt" Frewer is a Canadian American stage, TV and film actor. Acting since 1983, he is known for portraying the 1980s icon Max Headroom and the retired villain Moloch in the film adaptation of Watchmen.-Life and career:...
's debut performance.
Plot
The elderly BritishUnited Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
employees of the Permanent Assurance
Assurance
Assurance may refer to:* Assurance services, offered by accountancy firms to improve the quality of information* Assurance , a Protestant Christian doctrine...
Company, a staid London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
firm which has recently been taken over by the Very Big Corporation of America, rebel against their corporate masters when one of them is sacked
Firing
Dismissal is the termination of employment by an employer against the will of the employee. Though such a decision can be made by an employer for a variety of reasons, ranging from an economic downturn to performance-related problems on the part of the employee, being fired has a strong stigma in...
. Having locked the surviving supervisors in the safe, and forced their boss to walk a makeshift plank out a window, they commandeer their Edwardian office building, which suddenly weighs anchor, uses its scaffolding and tarpaulins as sails, and is turned into a pirate ship. The stone office building starts to move as if it were a ship. Sailing through the City of London
City of London
The City of London is a small area within Greater London, England. It is the historic core of London around which the modern conurbation grew and has held city status since time immemorial. The City’s boundaries have remained almost unchanged since the Middle Ages, and it is now only a tiny part of...
, they then proceed to attack The Very Big Corporation of America's skyscraper, using, among other things, wooden filing cabinet
Filing cabinet
A filing cabinet is a piece of office furniture usually used to store paper documents in file folders. In the most simple sense, it is an enclosure for drawers in which items are stored. The two most common forms of filing cabinets are blocky files and diagonal files...
s which have been transformed into carronade
Carronade
The carronade was a short smoothbore, cast iron cannon, developed for the Royal Navy by the Carron Company, an ironworks in Falkirk, Scotland, UK. It was used from the 1770s to the 1850s. Its main function was to serve as a powerful, short-range anti-ship and anti-crew weapon...
s and swords fashioned from the blades of a ceiling fan. On ropes, they swing into the board room and engage the executives of VBCA in hand-to-hand combat, vanquishing them.
After their hard-earned victory, the clerks continue to "sail the wide accountan-cy" (as they sing in their heroic sea shanty
Sea shanty
A shanty is a type of work song that was once commonly sung to accompany labor on board large merchant sailing vessels. Shanties became ubiquitous in the 19th century era of the wind-driven packet and clipper ships...
), until unceremoniously meeting their (now-animated) end by falling off the edge of the world
Flat Earth
The Flat Earth model is a belief that the Earth's shape is a plane or disk. Most ancient cultures have had conceptions of a flat Earth, including Greece until the classical period, the Bronze Age and Iron Age civilizations of the Near East until the Hellenistic period, India until the Gupta period ...
.
Typical of how Pythons would weave previously 'terminated' plot lines into later scenes of the same episode (like Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition in the TV show, or the recurring theme of the swallows carrying coconuts in the movie Holy Grail
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Monty Python and the Holy Grail is a 1974 British comedy film written and performed by the comedy group Monty Python , and directed by Gilliam and Jones...
), The Crimson Permanent Assurance suddenly re-emerges in the middle of the main feature of Monty Python's The Meaning of Life. After the donor scene, the movies shifts to follow a modern board room debate about the meaning of life (and that people are not wearing enough hats). This debate is happening at the Very Big Corporation of America headquarters building in the same room that witnessed the battle in the short film. The debate is halted when one executive asks, "Has anyone seen that building?" which turns out to be the marauding old London building/pirate ship of the Crimson Permanent Assurance. The audience gets to see briefly the attack of the pirates from the angle of the victims in the board room. The raid is halted by a modern skyscraper falling onto the moving Permanent Assurance Company building; with a voice-over apologizing for the temporary interruption "due to an attack by the supporting feature". The scene could be considered a "deleted scene
Deleted scene
In Entertainment, especially the film and television industry, Deleted scenes are parts of a film removed or censored from or replaced by another scene in the final "cut", or version, of a film...
" from the original short, the executives in the VBCA board room are shown discussing the meaning of life (and the fact that people are not wearing enough hats), immediately before the raid.
Behind the scenes
- According to the 2003 Monty Python's Meaning of Life DVD, this short immediately won over the audience at the Cannes Film FestivalCannes Film FestivalThe Cannes International Film Festival , is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films of all genres including documentaries from around the world. Founded in 1946, it is among the world's most prestigious and publicized film festivals...
. - Gilliam shot the film with a different cast and crew than the Meaning of Life main production (five of the members of Monty Python can be seen in brief cameos in the short: Terry Gilliam and Michael Palin washing the windows; and Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Graham Chapman early in the board room when the attack starts). Reportedly it went significantly over budget; almost double. Gilliam has defended himself by saying "nobody told me to stop". Initially planned as a five-minute sketch, it eventually expanded to half an hour. In the movie, it was edited down to 16 minutes.
- At the beginning, the building used for shooting was the Lloyd's Register (of Shipping) No.71 office in Fenchurch Street, not to be confused with the Lloyd's of LondonLloyd's of LondonLloyd's, also known as Lloyd's of London, is a British insurance and reinsurance market. It serves as a partially mutualised marketplace where multiple financial backers, underwriters, or members, whether individuals or corporations, come together to pool and spread risk...
Insurance Building. - The film's score was based on the works of Erich Wolfgang KorngoldErich Wolfgang KorngoldErich Wolfgang Korngold was an Austro-Hungarian film and romantic music composer. While his compositional style was considered well out of vogue at the time he died, his music has more recently undergone a reevaluation and a gradual reawakening of interest...
, mainly his work The Sea HawkThe Sea Hawk (1940 film)The Sea Hawk is a 1940 American Warner Bros. feature film starring Errol Flynn as an English privateer who defends his nation's interests on the eve of the Spanish Armada. The film was the tenth collaboration between Flynn and director Michael Curtiz. The film's screenplay by Howard Koch and Seton I...
. - The title is a reference to The Crimson PirateThe Crimson PirateThe Crimson Pirate is a 1952 American adventure film directed by Robert Siodmak. It stars Burt Lancaster, who also co-produced the film, as Captain Vallo, the eponymous pirate, and is set in the Caribbean late in the 18th century, on the fictional islands of Cobra and San Pero...
, which was itself a comedic spoof of traditional pirate films of the period. - The names of the various subsidiaries of the Very Big Corporation Of America are displayed in the board room, as a seemingly endless list covering the walls; the list was in fact a repeating sequence. Some of the names contain puns, or intentional in-jokes referencing other events in The Meaning of Life (such as the Live Organ Transplants sketch, which cuts to a shot of the sign painter in the board room inscribing "Liver Donors Inc." on the wall). Some of the company names that can be seen on the list are:
The Very Big Corporation of America:
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