Confessions of a Window Cleaner

Confessions of a Window Cleaner
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Val Guest
Produced by	Greg Smith, Michael Klinger (executive producer)
Written by	Val Guest Christopher Wood
Starring	Robin Askwith Antony Booth Linda Hayden Sheila White Dandy Nichols Bill Maynard
Music by	Sam Sklair
Cinematography	Norman Warwick
Edited by	Bill Lenny
Distributed by	Columbia Pictures
Release date	8 November 1974
Running time	90 minutes
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Budget	£150,000

Confessions of a Window Cleaner is a 1974 British sex comedy film, directed by Val Guest.

Like the other films in the Confessions series; Confessions of a Pop Performer, Confessions of a Driving Instructor and Confessions from a Holiday Camp, it concerns the erotic adventures of Timothy Lea, based on the novels written under that name by Christopher Wood. Each film features Robin Askwith and Antony Booth.

The optimistic and inept Timothy Lea is freshly employed by his brother-in-law Sid as a window cleaner. With Sid an impending father to be, he looks to Timmy to fully 'satisfy' his customers, little realising that Timmy's accident prone ways often stretch to his sex life with his clients. Timmy bed hops from unsatisfied housewives to even a lesbian love tryst, all the while with his main eye on successful police officer, Elizabeth Radlett, who will have none of Timmy's sexual advances. He proposes as a result, much to his family's upset, unaware that Timmy's usual run of luck will affect the outcome!

The film is essentially an adaptation of a sex novel printed in paperback form. It was adapted for the screen in the 1970s, when the British film industry produced a large number of film adaptations of literary works. Sian Barber cites other examples of this trend: Jane Eyre (1970), Wuthering Heights, Black Beauty (1971), The Go-Between (1971), Kidnapped (1972), Treasure Island (1973), Gulliver's Travels (1977), The Thirty Nine Steps (1978), and The Riddle of the Sands (1979). Sian Barber points that adaptations of highbrow material (for example, works by Henrik Ibsen, Anton Chekhov, Iris Murdoch) and Middlebrow material (for example, works by William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Rudyard Kipling, D. H. Lawrence) were hardly unusual by the 1970s, but points to Confessions as an early adaptation of low brow popular literature.