We'll Smile Again

This was one of four films made by Flanagan and Allen for John Baxter at British National.This is not screened anywhere.The copy I have only lasts 55 minutes and ends abruptly.I do not believe that a full copy exists.It's a daft story about Nazi spies in a film studio giving coded messages through a film.Bud and Ches indulge in typical routines.However the fact that the print has lost 38 minutes makes it difficult to assess how good the film was.

A typical propaganda film on the careless talk cost lives theme. A silly story but with Bud Flanagan it breezes along. Always nice to see Peggy Dexter, only 3 flics, as a bit of eye candy. Entertaining.

Bud Flanagan gets the lion's share of this Flanagan & Allen vehicle, which is amusing enough but not a patch on John Baxter's later films with the boys and rife with naughty words and sentiments that earned it a stern disclaimer from Talking Pictures.

Although brought up to date with a joke about Hitler, plenty of the routines (like the obnoxious waiter and how not to pay for a drink in a bar) obviously originated on the music hall stage (while Flanagan is actually asked at one point "What's a Greek urn?").

Since it's set in a film studio there are the usual joke about Yes men and xenophobic humour at the expense of a Jewish producer and a Prussian director with a monocle (as Flanagan observes "There are a lot of foreigners on this film, aren't there?").

It now being wartime the studio turns out be swarming with foreign agents; with the statuesque Phyllis Stanley reprising her Mata Hari from 'The Next of Kin'.