Jean Simmons has lost her brother and everyone claims he never existed. Even his hotel room has disappeared. Dirk Bogarde lends her a hand and falls for her in the process. Nice period mystery.
Script adapt.: Hugh Mills, (o.a.) Anthony Thorne
Director: Antony Darnborough, Terence Fisher
Players: David Tomlinson, Honor Blackman, Cathleen Nesbitt, Felix Aylmer, Betty Warren, Marcel Poncin, Austin Trevor, Andre Morell, Zena Marshall
Cicely Courtneidge plays two roles in this backstage musical. She is Jenny Marvello an old music-hall star and Maisy her daughter, a current star. At the start of the film Jenny passes her leadership of the family troupe to Maisy, who takes under her wing a young ingénue (Judy - Dorothy Hyson). Judy is courted by a young officer (Anthony Bushell) and this rekindles Maisy's memories of the young officer she was forced to give up by her mother.
Stephen Bourne's book Brief Encounters makes the relationship between Maisy and Judy one of unrequited lesbian love. There's no denying Maisy's fierce protectiveness of Judy and the potency of Maisy's image as a male impersonator but the book doesn't give the whole story. Maisy is courted by the ineffectual stage manager (Edward Everett Horton) but can't give up the memory of the big, strong soldier she lost. When Horton finally stands up to this soldier like a man, she (and the film) loses all interest in the girl and she and Horton end with a kiss during her curtain call.
It's not too bad as it goes and looks expensive but some of Courtneidge's clowning is self-indulgent. One song in particular, when she stands in for Judy at a rehearsal, seems to go on forever. The glimpses of her on stage, leading the audience in a sing-song or getting mixed up with an acrobatic act are much more satisfying.
Script: Douglas Furber, W.P. Lipscomb, Jack Hulbert, J.O.C. Orton
Director: Maurice Elvey
Players: Frank Cellier, Leslie Sarony, Bransby Williams, Olive Sloane
Unemployed car salesman Ian Hunter romances Nancy O'Neil unaware that her father owns a car company.
Script: Brock Williams
Director: Michael Powell
Players: Peter Gawthorne, Johnny Singer, Muriel George, Barry Livesey, Millicent Wolf, Louie Emery, Reg Marcus
A group of soldiers visits a friend's home and puts on a show.
It gets off to a very bad start. Two young women have a chance meeting in a cafe and they catch up on their news. It's a bad-acting masterclass. Anyone can embarrass themselves in a big dramatic moment, but it takes a special kind of genius to deliver a bit of exposition this appallingly. Never mind, no one's interested in the plot or these women anyway. For this is a Mancunian picture, and we're all waiting for Frank Randle.
Wild, anarchic, priapic Frank Randle was a one-off. In his north of England heartland, he was the King of Comedy. The rest of Britain scarcely knew he existed. This is a shame, because whether he's demolishing the piano he's cleaning or the partner with whom he's "jitter-buggering" he's a comedy powerhouse.
He's joined in this film by his usual collection of stooges and grotesques. Little Robbie Vincent gets to be gormless, Dan Young gets to be posh, and Harry Korris gets to be long-suffering. Korris is the best of the bunch, a big, sweet man who overuses his catchphrase ("If ever a Sergeant suffered!") but with good reason given the provocation.
The comedy is basic and the direction even more basic. Characters converse by standing at 90 degrees to each other facing out as though they were on stage. The comic set pieces are strung together with a plot so flimsy you can hardly see it.
It's strange that such a sunny, silly comedy is set in an army camp. However, unlike most other comics of this era, Randle isn't interested in uncovering a Nazi spy ring or foiling invasion plans. He'd need a proper plot for that. The only fighting is done by the women of the ATS who shoot down a German plane while the men blunder about in the blackout.
As the third in the "Somewhere On..." series, the comic invention is beginning to wear thin, but it's still well worth a look.
Script: Roney Parsons, Anthony Toner
Director: John E. Blakeley
Players: Pat McGrath, Toni Lupino, Noel Dainton, Tonie Edgar Bruce, Percival Mackey and His Orchestra
One of Paul Robeson's best despite the plot which first turns Robeson from a London docker to an opera singer (believable) and then to an African Prince (hm!). He gets to sing "Sleepy River" with Elisabeth Welsh which is worth the admission price alone.
Script: Fenn Sherie, Ingram d'Abbes, Michael Barringer, Philip Lindsay
Director: J. Elder Wills
Players: George Mozart, Esme Percy, Joan and Fred Emney, Arthur Williams, Alf Goddard
A London council has finally decided to enter the modern age and get rid of all its horse-drawn vehicles. The workers are to be retrained but Bill (Bransby Williams) refuses to learn new ways. He spends his last month's pay buying his old horse Polly and they go to the country looking for work. He finds that the countryside is also becoming mechanised. He helps a side-show medicine man for a while and then works on an old-fashioned farm. Finally he becomes a groom at a home for retired horses where he and Polly can live out their days together.
Director/producer John Baxter believed in making British films about British people and he used the quota-quickie to do this. He delighted in the working class culture of the music halls and directed four of Old Mother Riley's better films as well as Flanagan and Allen and George Robey. He also made more serious films such as Love on the Dole and Doss House. In Song of the Road he tries to present a panorama of the changing countryside.
In this he is partly successful: there are lots of pretty shots of the English countryside in summer and lashings of sentiment about the pace of modern life. What lets it down is the script. It lacks drive and most of the dialogue is annoyingly arch. The acting's not up to much either. Bransby Williams plays Bill like one of those wide-eyed, soulful spaniels you long to kick. Next to him, the other actors might not be up to much but at least they aren't too irritating. Tod Slaughter, blackmailing the medicine man's wife for sex, is more subdued than usual (though a subdued Slaughter is still wonderfully over-the-top).
Bill forever sticks his nose into other people's business. He forces the medicine man to join a modern circus in order to save his marriage, and he forces the old-fashioned farmer to modernise and to make a play for the local widow. He is, in turn, found a job by the widow and settles down in what is a surprisingly emotional climax after the dullness of most of the film.
This is not a film to use to advertise the merits of the quota-quickie. It has most of the faults of low-budget film-making but it does at least get out into the countryside and look for real life. The fast, modern machinery now looks wonderfully quaint, and the old-fashioned stuff is loaded with nostalgia. But these compensations are weak compared with the awfulness of the film in general. One to miss.
Script: John Baxter
Director: John Baxter
Players: Ernest Butcher, Muriel George, Davy Burnaby, John Turnbull, Edgar Driver, Fred Schwartz, Percy Parsons, Peggy Novak, H.F. Maltby, Jonnie Schofield, Ernest Jay, Robert English, F.B.J. Sharp, Phil Thomas
Can a young cadet prove that his father is not involved in a spy ring?
Stirring patriotic drama most notable for being shot in colour.
Script: Maurice Elvey, Gerald Elliott, William Woolf
Director: Maurice Elvey
Players: Leslie Banks, Kay Walsh, Simon Lack, Mackenzie Ward, Cecil Parker, Ellen Pollock, Peter Shaw, Nigel Stock, P. Kynaston Reeves, Charles Eaton, Gordon Begg, Robert Field
The attempt to break the sound barrier breaks apart a family of aviators. David Lean gets the best out of a cast that includes Ann Todd and Ralph Richardson. The flying stuff is a must for fans of old aircraft (with Comets, Vampires and others in the cast list) and for the rest of us the script provides a neat study in obsession and repression English-style.
Script: Terence Rattigan
Director: David Lean
Players: Nigel Patrick, John Justin, Dinah Sheridan, Denholm Elliott, Joseph Tomelty, Jack Allen, Ralph Michael, Donald Harron, Vincent Holman, Douglas Muir, Leslie Phillips, Robert Brooks Trevor, Anthony Snell, Jolyon Jackley
Eric Portman and Van Heflin are the rival archaeologists searching the Sahara for a golden mask. Good adventure yarn with great shots of the desert in Technicolor.
Script: Robert Westerby
Director: Jack Lee
Players: Wanda Hendrix, Charles Goldner, Marne Maitland
