Things Are Looking Up

Tiny role for Leigh...first film.'

"Things Are Looking Up" is a comedy where you really have to suspend disbelief. In other words, don't think too much about the improbable plot...just enjoy.

Bertha an Cicely are sisters who look almost exactly the same (though the film says they are NOT twins). Bertha is a humorless school teacher and Cicely is the opposite...a circus owner who knows how to enjoy life.

Quite uncharacteristically, Bertha drops everything to run off with a man. Her friends think it's just a passing fancy, so they ask Cicely to fill in and pretend she is Bertha. Amazingly enough, no one notices the ruse...even though their personalities are so different. What is next? What sorts of problems does Cecily deal with apart from not letting folks know who she really is.

Again, this is essentially a turn off your brain and enjoy sort of picture...fun and also quite silly. But I do recommend you see it and if you do, keep your eyes open for a young Vivien Leigh as one of the students...and she delivers just one line in this, her debut film.

This funny movie is written, performed, pitched and timed like a one-woman show for Cicely Courtneidge, with Max Miller and William Gargan as her stooges. Miss Courtneidge plays twins; one owns a circus and is general dogsbody because there's no money, and the other is a snobby schoolteacher who has just eloped; there's a third sister, so Miss Courtneidge pretends to be Miss Courtneidge as she goes through various big acts.

The general staginess is right in line with director Albert de Courville, who spent most of his career directing stage spectacles. It's not in the least cinematic, but it is a lot of fun.

A typically nice Cicely Courtneidge film - exuberance and nonsense in varying amounts, amusing and irritating in turn. It was a single song musical - but what a song, one of Noel Gay's finest tunes!

Cicely plays identical twin sisters, the prim one is a girls school mistress, the lively one a circus proprietor - the lively one steps into the breach when the prim one debunks with her lover for Africa. It's occasionally very funny but also very dull at times, with long stretches of childish slapstick. However my favourite bit is the "composing" of the song Things Are Looking Up by Cicely and Bill Gargan which I've seen so often over the years it's now part of me, classic and catchy corn indeed. On a side note the great Max Miller had a few snappy lines but was sadly underused.

I've always enjoyed Cicely's films and music - her careless vitality still appeals to me in today's more colourful and wiser world, this world where imposters can't thrive at girls schools, circus animals are banned, and people spreading positive messages and harmlessness are derided.

This film is a fun romp and a perfect vehicle for Ms. Courtneidge's talents- mugging of the grand school ala Marie Dressler - both coming from the vaudeville training of broad comic gesture and both homely, matronly but lovable.

The title tune is quite infectious and well done. Note the continuity error in the Wimbledon audience. The fellow in the front row bottom right of screen sometimes wears a hat and sometimes not.

Vivien Leigh is most noticeable in three scenes- she is behind the girl in the geometry class who gives Cicely a hard time; she is in front row of third window scene during the title tune production number; she has her one line towards the end in a checkered dress as she tells Courtneidge she won't return to the school if the latter isn't elected headmistress.

Do make an effort to see this- much fun.

This is a most entertaining and amusing film, and evocative of simpler times and pleasures. Cicely Courtneidge is infectious in her bonhomie and mad humour, and despite having the broad gestures of a former vaudevillian, she carries the whole thing off wonderfully by sheer force of personality and good fun. Her younger sister is played by a charming young actress named Mary Lawson, who was sadly killed in a German air raid in 1941, depriving the screen of a fine talent. This film also featured Vivien Leigh in her first screen appearance, with one line. This film is set half at the circus (a real one of that time was used for the filming) and half at a girls' boarding school. For once, real schoolgirls actually play many of the girls in the film, and only a few of the leading ones are too old for their parts (Vivien Leigh was 21 playing 15.) This is a madcap comedy, wildly improbable and meant to be so, with a touch of slapstick. Cicely Courtneidge might be described as the female Will Hay, totally oblivious of decorum, with a heart of gold and ready to try to teach advanced geometry (she doesn't know a triangle from a rectangle) if it will save her twin sister her job (the sister has eloped, but no one is meant to know, while her twin waits for her to come back). Cicely plays both sisters, one with a prune in her mouth who teaches school primly, the other an outrageous extrovert who rides bareback, does trapeze acts, and plays tennis at Wimbledon where she breaks a racket and bounces balls off her head. The film is wildly anarchic for its time, unrestrained in its fun, and most refreshing in its innocence.