This film is part of Rentals
The Bespoke Overcoat
A clerk in a cold warehouse wants one of the warm sheepskin coats stacked around him.
Director: Jack Clayton
Overview
The Bespoke Overcoat is almost a two-hander between the tailor Morry (David Kossoff) and the clothing accountant Fender (Alfie Bass), the actors reprising their roles from Wolf Mankowitz' stage adaptation (which relocated the action to London's Jewish East End). Fender, suffering bitterly from the cold, is unable to afford one of the luxury sheepskin overcoats sold by his boss, so he asks Morry to repair his old one.
Although Jack Clayton had directed his first film in 1944, his first onscreen directorial credit came eleven years later, on this 33-minute adaptation of a short story by the great Russian fabulist Nikolai Gogol. It made a considerable splash for a short film, winning an Oscar, a BAFTA and a Venice Film Festival award, though it would be three years before Clayton would be given a feature to helm - the groundbreaking Room at the Top (1958).
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