The film includes actor Matt Frewer's debut performance.
Plot
The elderly employees of the Permanent Assurance Company, a staid London firm which has recently been taken over by the Very Big Corporation of America (VBCA), rebel against their much younger corporate masters when one of them is wrongfully sacked. Having locked the surviving supervisors in the safe as hostages, 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 masts, yards and sails, and the stone office building starts to move as if it were a pirate ship. Leaving the City of London, they sail to another financial centre and then attack the VBCA's skyscraper, using - among other things - wooden filing cabinets as carronades, cutlasses fashioned from ceiling fan blades, and stationery spindles as daggers. They swing on ropes into the board room and engage the executives of VBCA in hand-to-hand combat, eventually vanquishing them after a long and drawn out battle.
After their hard-won victory, the clerks celebrate while singing a heroic sea shanty as they once more "sail the wide accountan-sea" in search of further adventures. However, they unceremoniously sail off the edge of the world due to their belief about the shape of the world being "disastrously wrong".
Typical of the way the Pythons weave callback gags into their projects (such as "The Spanish Inquisition" in Flying Circus, or the repeated references to swallows in Holy Grail), The Crimson Permanent Assurance re-emerges in the middle of The Meaning of Life. After the donor scene, the film shifts to a modern boardroom in the VBCA headquarters, where the executives debate the meaning of life. The debate is halted when one executive asks "Has anyone noticed that building there before?", which turns out to be the Crimson Permanent Assurance. As the beginning of the battle between the clerks and the VBCA is repeated, the raid is suddenly halted by a falling skyscraper crushing the Permanent Assurance Company building, accompanied by a voice-over apologizing for the "unwarranted attack by the supporting feature".
Having originally conceived the story as a six-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,[citation needed] the film's rhythm, length, and style of cinematography made it a poor fit as a scene in the larger movie, so it was presented as a supplementary short ahead of the film.
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 (often Public Information Films) or travelogues. The Pythons had already produced one spoof travelogue narrated by John Cleese, Away from It All, which was shown before Life of Brian (1979) in Britain.
In popular culture
The Crimson Permanent Assurance plays a prominent role in Charles Stross's 2013 novel Neptune's Brood, where the CPA is an interstellar insurance company that sponsors space pirates who double as cargo auditors. The CPA also features in the novel's twist ending.
References
↑McCall, Douglas (2013-11-12). Monty Python: A Chronology, 1969-2012, 2nd ed. p. 97. McFarland. ISBN9780786478118.
↑Hunter, I. Q.; Porter, Laraine (2012). British Comedy Cinema. Routledge. p.181. ISBN978-0-415-66667-1.
↑McCabe, Bob (1999). Dark Knights and Holy Fools: The Art and Films of Terry Gilliam: From Before Python to Beyond Fear and Loathing. Universe. p.106. ISBN0-7893-0265-9.
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