Timing of Tania's cocktail party

"Permit that there may be a difference between your assumptions of reality and reality itself."

Excuse me, there's no call for this superior attitude, just because someone has a different opinion from yours. Besides, if anyone is not "permitting" that there may be a difference between his assumptions of reality and reality itself, Jason_Radley, it's you -- for nowhere do you offer facts, merely your own presumptions based on opinions and bent to conform to preconcevied ideas.

In fact, after watching the movie again, doing a bit more research and asking some people in or from Britain (including my wife) who would know about such things, I've come to the conclusion that the film itself has so many contradictory aspects that its time frame (and other matters) either make no logical sense or ignore realities...meaning that this entire argument is essentially pointless because the film is so filled with errors.

To take the events at issue in sequence (any of your quotes are lifted verbatim from your posts and italicized in red):

Alan leaving work. By your time line you state this has to be on a Saturday, not only because the race is on a Sunday but because he's leaving early for lunch. However, that simply doesn't jibe with the evidence. First, the Royal Courts of Justice are essentially closed and largely deserted on Saturday. Little if any business is conducted on the weekend. Even if you were to stretch the point by arguing (without proof) that Alan was for some reason there on a Saturday, his superiors and most of the people seen in the sequence would not have been present.

Apart from the fact that little if any such work is done on weekends, we also have to remember the hallowed British tradition of "the weekend". The middle and professional classes always get away as early on Friday afternoon as possible -- probably more so then than even now. You yourself state, "I'm not sure if this circumstance is historically accurate", and it's not. You're making an assumption -- without proof -- to fit in with your preferred time line, with by your own admission no factual basis...in other words, a difference between reality and your assumption of it. You're assuming something to fit in with your theory, not finding an actual fact that supports it.

Finally, Alan Trevennor, a friend of Dinah Sheridan and historian of the film, states that Alan McKim leaves work on the Friday, and that the action takes place from Friday to Sunday. For what it's worth, a trivia entry on this site also states the film takes place from Friday, September 18 to Sunday, September 20, 1953, dates which check with the 1953 calendar.

Rosalind's remark at Hyde Park. What she says is that she was at a party Friday that got out of hand and they flew to Jersey -- less than an hour's flight from London in 1953 on prop aircraft. (It's about 20 minutes by jet today.) Ambrose says he'd been phoning her all night, meaning the previous night. So, first, it's quite possible for Rosalind to have flown over to and back from Jersey overnight. Second, if she'd been away all Saturday, why hadn't Ambrose been phoning her during the day as well? As to your point that she'd have said "last night" instead of "Friday" had the party been Friday night, I agree with you -- you'd expect her to say "last night" if that were the case.

But this, of course, assumes her party was on Friday night. Yet from what little we can surmise about the type of crowd Rosalind seems to run with (she's a model and so does not have "office hours"), they might well be the kind who'd start a party Friday afternoon and leave later on for Jersey, returning the next day. (It's unlikely they'd stay over two nights because no one would have a change of clothes, and she says the party got out of hand, meaning the trip wasn't planned). Now, it's correct that most of this is surmise and extrapolation -- though not "assumption", because I'm not assuming this is what happened, just positing it as very possible, even likely. But you're assuming she was away from Friday to Sunday without any proof, just your surmise. At best, this seems open to interpretation...or to be another example of the film's sloppiness, about which more below.

The nightclub. "Do you really believe that nightclubs were banned from opening on Sunday evenings in Fifties Britain?" Yes, except that they weren't "banned" per se. Nightclubs did not start to open on Sunday nights in Britain until well into the 1960s, but even today most don't open simply because it's not economically worth their while. The principle reason is that alcohol laws banned serving liquor anywhere near that late on a Sunday. At most, you might have been able to get a meal at a private club early on Sunday evenings (4 or 5 o'clock, and probably only in London), but there would have been no alcohol, bands, dancing or anything of that kind late Sunday night, and the clubs would have been closed.

Remember also that Alan and Wendy check into their fleabag hotel just before 9:00 PM -- the clock across from their room strikes 9 (and you can see its face) after they get to their room. They show up to meet Ambrose and Rosalind much later -- they have to have cleaned up a bit (even without hot water), dressed, then gotten to the club, which means they couldn't possibly have arrived there before 10, and probably later. They're clearly there for quite a while, probably an hour or more (not just a few minutes), dancing and talking, with Rosalind getting drunker before her trumpet solo. This just doesn't square with licensing laws and common practice for a Sunday.

So yes, I guarantee the nightclub scene could not have taken place in Britain late on a Sunday night in 1953. It had to be Saturday.

Ambrose and Alan not at work. You say that because Alan comes home for lunch, and Ambrose shows up, that this has to be a Saturday, because they're not at work -- once more, an assumption to fit your preferred time line rather than anything based on actual information. Again, I point to the habit of the professional and middle class to get away early for the weekend in Britain. However, assuming your presumption is correct -- that this couldn't be Friday because they'd both still be at work -- then how does this fit in with your belief that they return on Monday? Last I looked, Monday was a working day -- a bigger one than Friday. If the race back were on Monday both men would miss not just a few hours' work in the afternoon, but a whole day. (As, presmably, would Rosalind, even if she didn't work in an office.) This argument makes no sense at all. And it should be pointed out that there were no holidays of any kind on either September 21 or November 3, 1953 -- the only two Mondays the race could conceivably have been run on (the weekend in the movie and the actual race weekend that year).

If their working hours are an issue (and I don't think they particularly are), then having the film start on Friday makes vastly more sense than having it start on Saturday.

"Not only is there no positive indication of the run to Brighton taking place on Saturday, I think there's definite proof to the contrary." What "definite proof"? Definite proof would be one of the characters saying something like, "Why do I have to be in this car on a [Saturday/Sunday] morning." Unfortunately, nowhere in the film is there any explicit statement as to what day it is at any time. And your preference for assuming facts not in evidence to fit your preconceived notions notwithstanding, there are plenty of positive indications that the run to Brighton takes place on Saturday, and few that it's on Sunday.

Now, could the film have begun on Saturday and gone into Monday? Perhaps. But the overwhelming circumstantial evidence (for that's all there is), plus historical facts and basic logic, are against this. Since the movie never makes the times clear, any interpretation is possible. One can only judge by watching the film carefully, knowing some historical facts, making educated statements based on what we're told, and learning what people involved with the film thought. Such as it is, the evidence strongly indicates a Friday-Saturday-Sunday time frame.

Final thoughts. In truth, of course, the Brighton race is run in November, not September. It is run on a Sunday, but the Veteran Car Race (the one the film covers) is actually run on a Saturday -- today. I'm not sure about 1953, though I think it was on a Sunday then. Also in truth, the filming took place along mostly different roads than the actual race, mainly in Buckinghamshire. Not least, there are scores of continuity problems in this film, and things that don't quite add up.

In short, the film is filled with changes, flaws and inconsistencies in most respects. The goof the OP mentioned is probably accurate: Tania's party is September 20, according to the invitation -- a Sunday; and Wendy does say they have an invitation to Tania's "tomorrow"...which would indicate she was speaking on the Saturday, and the race was Sunday-Monday. On the other hand, it's also possible she simply either misspoke the line, or else the prop letter didn't match the script. The invitation and Wendy's one line are probably the strongest argument that the race starts on Sunday -- except that so much else militates against that.

So what can we conclude? Perhaps simply that the filmmakers weren't too concerned with logic or time frames or making sure every event or line of dialogue matched events logically or historically or whatever. Maybe they were just a bit sloppy in their filmmaking -- and reportedly this film was hell to make, with each of the actors at various times wanting off it. They were producing a comedy that had minimum fealty to reality. So why bother the details? Perhaps the second poster here was correct -- no one noticed this supposed goof because the movie is what's most important. Maybe that's how the film was made -- and that the precise timing of events is secondary to the enjoyment of the film.