For Valour

The Ben Travers farces staring Walls and Lynn were hugely popular in the twenties and thirties. Some of those filmed plays were funny, really funny but as this shows, by 1937 they'd run out of steam.

Writer Travers and character actor Walls kept going well into the forties but after this, "silly ass" Ralph Lynn wisely called it a day. It's sad and annoying to see this team creating such tiresome and uninspired material after their moment in the sun just a few years earlier but so many comedy teams don't seem to know when to quit.

This film has an interesting story and being produced by Max Schach, who famously threw more money than most at his productions, it looks very impressive. (Indeed Max Schach was so extravagant with his budgets that he went bankrupt just after wasting his money on this.) There's a clever touch when we see the schoolboy version of them speaking with the voices of our two stars (unless you're a Walls + Lynn fan you'll probably just the sound has gone wrong!) but the direction is very pedestrian. Tom Walls insisted on directing his pictures himself but this is as static and turgid as his very first efforts at the start of the decade. That's the problem his style - not just in direction, didn't move with the times.

The other problem is that although some of Tom Wall's comedy characters were very funny, his 'normal persona' which he uses for one of the leads in this simply doesn't come across as that likeable. This one is for Aldwych Farce completists only - of perhaps they'd be the ones who shouldn't watch this as like me it's a bit of a sad postscript to end a reasonably decent career.

The first time I saw this was on UK Channel 4 on 3rd April 1992 – the VHS tape lasted well; a recording from a lost world taped in a different world now digitised for this current modern world. It was a non-Aldwych farce written and screenplayed by Ben Travers for the usual team of Tom Walls and Ralph Lynn to interpret in their usual laidback and reflective styles. Therefore it's another convoluted and frantic ninety minutes.

Story has Boer War Major Lynn's life saved by Private Walls in the heat of battle – Lynn tries to reward Walls who turns out to be a habitual jailbird beyond all help, so he helps Walls' son instead by becoming his foster father. Years pass and Lynn is in his dotage, son Lynn and father Walls are habitual jailbirds and son Walls is a respectable City crook. The farce is on to prevent his disclosure and exposure. It really needs to be watched in context but there's some delicious lines eg "I wouldn't believe anyone sweet and wonderful as you could be so unprincipled" - "Thank you darling" and situations eg young Walls and old Lynn's interpolatory meeting setting the stage; old Walls frank conversation with the barmaid; young Walls with his loyal and stately wife played by long-suffering ladylike Veronica Rose; the cavalier way the victim Hubert Harben was abused, even when he had Scotland Yard in attendance. And watch out for the future Batman's future butler the young Alan Napier who puts in a brief appearance.

Serious people will need to brace themselves when a character's definition of "whitemail" is reached, and some people may dislike the hurried ending on a moral high - but even if not probable it still was possible! If you know your Travers-Walls-Lynn wine women and silly-asses you won't be disappointed. All in all it's a very pleasant time-filler for me and maybe a few others who might like filling their time with ancient farces with archaic humour from antiquity.

In this British comedy, set during the Boer War, a foot soldier saves his major's life. The officer is most grateful and puts the soldier in line for a Victoria Cross (a medal for valor). Unfortunately the well-meaning major's actions cause the soldier to be extradited back to England where he must stand trial for a series of crimes he committed before he joined the military. Later the major scours the British jails in search of the heroic lad. He finally finds him recruiting soldiers for WW I.

Both Walls and Lynn played dual roles of two Boer War veterans and their son and grandson respectively. It was the last time the two actors, who had been one of the most popular film comedy teams of the decade, appeared together on screen.

This Ben Travers military comedy offers the amusing spectacle of comedians Tom Walls (also the director) and Ralph Lynn in dual roles and sets up its opening premise briskly. Walls is especially dry in his playing and the continuity benefits from some clever cutting. But despite the tour de force performances the treatment is overly complicated and talky.This is the kind of theatrical material that in the hands of someone like Sacha Guitry could have been a sparkling gem.