Director: TOM WALLS. Screenplay: Ben Travers. Based on his stage play. Photography: Roy Kellino, Arthur Crabtree. Film editor: Alfred Roome. Art director: Walter Murton. Music director: Louis Levy. Sound recording: F. McNally. British Acoustic Film Sound System. Producer: Michael Balcon. A Gainsborough Picture, presented by Gaumont-British Picture Corporation, made at Gainsborough Studios, Islington, London.
Never copyrighted, theatrically released or broadcast in the U.S.A. U.K. release through Gaumont-British. London trade screening: April 1936. Australian release through 20th Century-Fox: 5 August 1936. 71 minutes.
SYNOPSIS: An incompetent jewelry-store manager and his sister (!) hinder/aid an ex-detective's efforts to nail a gang of thieves.
COMMENT: By comparison with the usual Ben Travers farce, this one certainly starts off in an odd fashion with the Walls character capturing a desperate safe-cracker on the run after killing a policeman. This introductory sequence is not handled for laughs at all. Nor does it have any relevance to the main plot. It simply serves as an introduction to the main character, establishing him as a serious foil for the foolish Lynn. Yes, what we do have here is a comic thriller, with the accent on "comic", but it builds slowly and cleverly to a series of slapstick chases and edge-of-the-seat turns in an old abbey.
Walls deftly times his direction neatly to the script. The opening sequences are filmed in rather a flat fashion so that Walls can spring a large number of really effective surprises later on. True, the comic drama of the chases is somewhat undermined by obvious process screen inserts, but this was standard studio practice and can hardly be blamed on Walls. From the moment Diana Churchill asides to Lynn out of the corner of her mouth, "It's the bag!" and he asininely repeats the statement, the comedy moves into really high gear.
The abbey setting is both vast and wonderfully creepy. Aided by an appropriately monkish music score, a Karloff-type butler Gordon James introduces Robertson Hare with a delightful fanfare. Lots of pell- mell chases, near misses and discoveries, captures and escapes later with Walls, Lynn, Hare, Churchill, James, Hunt, O'Rourke, Kirby, Emmerton, Roberts, Stoker, Barrett, Smith and Gray playing hide-and-seek all over the sets, the picture comes to a fitting, if trifle sad conclusion.
Notice how Murton has built the abbey sets slightly out of perpendicular to give them an appropriately "old dark house" look. These sequences are also photographed in a forcefully noirish style — doubtless the work of the more experienced Kellino, whilst Crabtree handled the rather flat lighting in the shop scenes.
Wall and Lynn do their usual agreeably colorful work, ably assisted by Robertson Hare and Diana Churchill (playing Lynn's sister — doubtless to avoid cluttering an already close-to-crowded script with romantic complications).
Among the support players, mention must be made of the grotesquely made up Roy Emmerton as the chief heavy, the already mentioned Gordon James, an unrecognizable Martita Hunt bereft of her usual mannerisms as his wife, O'Rourke's deliciously dialectic chauffeur, J.H. Roberts' most agreeable con man and H.G. Stoker's "respectable" businessman type. Plus Mervyn Johns in an early film appearance (possibly only his third) as the dim-witted, slow-to- react janitor! Despite the multitude of characters, Travers has given them all enough individuality for the players to sharply delineate. Even the introductory cameo of the criminal Lever is memorably etched by Sam Wilkinson.
All told "Pot Luck" is a highly diverting piece of first-class entertainment, most skilfully scripted by a true professional and most ingratiatingly acted by a thoroughly crowd-pleasing medley of players.
Among the support players, mention must be made of the grotesquely made up Roy Emmerton as the chief heavy, the already mentioned Gordon James, an unrecognizable Martita Hunt bereft of her usual mannerisms as his wife, O'Rourke's deliciously dialectic chauffeur, J.H. Roberts' most agreeable con man and H.G. Stoker's "respectable" businessman type. Plus Mervyn Johns in an early film appearance (possibly only his third) as the dim-witted, slow-to-react janitor!
Despite the multitude of characters, Travers has given them all enough individuality for the players to sharply delineate. Even the introductory cameo of the criminal Lever is memorably etched by Sam Wilkinson
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