New Year’s Day just wouldn’t
be right without Mary Poppins, even though the
idiots in charge of television keep broadcasting it on the wrong day. We will
not be thwarted though, we simply don’t watch it when they decide, and you can’t
make us watch when you want us to Mr. BBC.
We still seem to have a fair
amount of party food left in the house, so we loaded up the coffee table and
sat down for what is in my opinion the third best film ever (The Blues Brothers being number one and It’s A Mad
Mad Mad Mad World at number two).
Although I’ve seen this film
hundreds of times before, I made a new discovery this time around. Actually it
wasn’t so much a discovery as a theory.
We know that Mary Poppins
(always the full name of course) arrived not so much to look after the
children, but to sort out the lives of the family unit as a whole, mending the
distant relationship between the children and their somewhat dictatorial
father. However, I came to the conclusion that Bert arrived at the same time to
help. We never learn anything about Bert’s home life, and he seems to always be
in the right place at the right time to win the trust of the children and
eventually (because the mother has an engagement, Mary Poppins has the day off,
and Ellen the maid seemingly can’t be arsed and wouldn’t look after the
children “for an ‘undred quid”) the parents. Surely Bert is magical too? Or
maybe he and Mary Poppins are working as a team? The film provides very little
in the way of a back story, but Bert is every bit as manipulative towards
George Banks as Mary Poppins; the scene between them as Bert cleans up after
filling the house with dancing chimney sweeps is one of the most moving exchanges
in the whole film.
You're a man
of 'igh position
Esteemed by your peers
And when your little tykes are cryin'
You 'aven't time to dry their tears
And see them grateful little faces
Smilin' up at you
Because their dad, 'e always knows
Just what to do
You've got to grind, grind, grind
At that grindstone
Though child'ood slips like sand through a sieve
And all too soon they've up grown
And then they've flown
And it's too late for you to give
Just that spoonful of sugar
To 'elp the medicine go down
The medicine go down, the medicine go down
(c) Disney
The above passage from ‘A Man
Has Dreams’ is sung by Bert as if he is siding with George Banks, but is
obviously intended as a criticism. Later in the film when the whole cast go out
flying kites, he is suddenly a kite salesman.
It is a long time since I read
the books by P.L. Travers, and I haven’t read every single one, so I can’t
remember how significant a role Bert had throughout. I do seem to remember him
being referred to as a match seller, but can’t remember much else.
With Bert being in all the
right places, I therefore also wondered if that is the (unmentioned) reason for
Dick Van Dyke also playing the part of Mr. Dawes Snr, because it is simply Bert
in disguise. Mr. Dawes Snr did after all share the laughter/floatation
affliction. Another theory is that Mr. Dawes Jnr is Bert’s father, and that
Bert was cast out of the banking side of the family, and took on the guardian
angel role alongside Mary Poppins, who is actually his sister. Although if they
were siblings, there would be no need for Mary Poppins to thank Bert for never ‘pressing
his advantage’ (an expression it took years for me to understand). Right
opposite the bank where George Banks works, sits the bird woman. Is she another
all knowing figure working with Mary Poppins and Bert to help people to ‘see
past the nose on their face’? She could possibly be Mary Poppins’s mother, so
if she and Bert are siblings, she is merely sitting on the steps to keep a
guiding eye on her husband (Mr. Dawes Jnr) who doesn’t possess the family magic
powers. Perhaps Mr. Dawes Jnr, in the final sequence, ‘gains his wings’ to
reference It’s A Wonderful Life, in giving George
Banks the promotion thus awarding him the magic powers. This could be why the
bird woman (his wife) stops following him to work as she is no longer needed.
They also both called the
laughing floating man ‘Uncle Albert’.
Although Christmas is never
mentioned in the film, Mary Poppins
has all of the elements that make up the Christmas film formula. George Banks
is a combination of the distant workaholic father, and Ebenezer Scrooge; both
too wrapped up in themselves to appreciate how much love there is in the world.
Mary Poppins and Bert are doing the work of Clarence, (the guardian angel in It’s A Wonderful Life), Fred Astaire’s mysterious everyman
in The Man In The Santa Claus Suit, and
Buddy the Elf in making these people see that they play an important role in
their family’s affections.
Right at the beginning of the
film as the wind changes direction, Bert looks wistfully up at the sky and
sings that he “can’t put me finger on what lies in store, but I feel what’s to
happen all happened before”, an obvious reference to Mary Poppins coming to the
rescue once again. When they first meet in the film, Bert recognises her
silhouette on the pavement and she in turn remarks that it is good to see him again. Could Mary Poppins be either
a time traveler, or a magically ageless woman of unknown age who was once Bert’s
nanny? (The fact that she could have been Bert’s nanny in his childhood has
been mentioned before somewhere, although I can’t remember where). I remember
it being alluded to in the books that she could have also been George Banks’s
nanny, but she operates some kind of memory wipe once she’s helped the family
and upped sticks. That would explain why one minute Jane and Michael were
crying at her for leaving, but when they went to fly a kite with their suddenly
nice parents, they didn’t even look back, because she had made them forget.
On the other hand, maybe I
should stop trying to analyse a children’s film?
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