Windbag the Sailor

I've always enjoyed British humor and comedy; and I think the British movies and TV sitcoms of the late 20th century are generally far superior to those on this side of the pond. But, until recently I hadn't seen many early English films. So, I was surprised and pleased to find that our English cousins also had some early doses of slapstick and buffoonery on film. .

"Windbag the Sailor" is such a film. Its cast has some stars of British cinema from the silent days to the early years of sound pictures. Will Hay didn't start in pictures until sound, but he was a talented actor, writer and director. He plays Captain Ben Cutlet, who has many a yarn about his seagoing days to spin at the local pub. One can guess what the plot might be from that. Other actors add to the goofy plot that is punctuated with some hilarious scenes.

I don't know if the United Kingdom had anything like vaudeville. It surely had performance halls for such entertainment. A number of early American stage entertainers took their vaudeville acts to Europe in the early 20th century. If the Brits didn't have a phase of vaudeville, the country was quick to develop its own film industry. Movie houses opened as quickly as in the Americas. Comedies, dramas, mysteries and adventure films soon became common fare for the Brits. "Windbag the Sailor" is an early example of British buffoonery on film that most movie buffs should enjoy.

Of all the 1930s English comedies, Will Hay's films are the ones which appeal most in a modern audience. Silly, gentle, nostalgic and always uplifting. Although most of his films are virtually identical, this is one of the best.

This was made immediately after WHERE THERE'S A WILL with the same team but with one notable addition: Moore Marriott and Graham Moffatt as Harbottle and Albert who would repeat their roles in Hay's next five pictures. These three are simply magical together.

Although his gentle humour; laughing at loveable incompetence is akin to that of Laurel and Hardy, I find the mood of Hay's films, that sense of teetering close to the close to the cliff edge between blissful ignorance and anarchy closer to that of early Marx Brothers. Maybe it's also because they inevitably have a Margaret Dumont equivalent, a wealthy trusting and naïve patron who can see only the good in Will Hay/Groucho - in this picture, like the previous ones that's Norma Varden who looks and acts suitably matronly despite only being 36! A film like this ostensibly looks childish but what it's doing is appealing to our base emotions and there's nothing wrong with that - after all, you couldn't call SPONGEBOB sophisticated but it's still funny.

It takes real genius (Hay was famously quite the intellectual) to make something which appears so childish so engaging to grown-ups.

Captain Ben Cutlet likes to spin yarns about all of his {fake}seafaring adventures, one day his false past comes to bite him as he is bluffed into captaining the Rob Roy at sea, the Rob Roy being barely sea worthy and doomed to be wrecked by a crafty shipping agent.

Windbag The Sailor is probably most notable for being the first teaming of Will Hay with Moore Marriott & Graham Moffatt, a trio that would go on to make classic British comedies Oh Mr Porter! and Ask A Policeman. Here its evident that they are finding their way as regards what best works for them as a team, but a few mistimings here and there are easily forgiven once the hapless Cutlet {Hay} finds himself at sea completely incapable of captaining the ever thuggish looking crewe. The usual madcap sequences from our bumbling trio dot themselves throughout the film, and there is no lack of oral gags as well, my favourite being one involving Hay explaining to a desert island native the power of the box {a radio acting as a god}.

Hay has done better and worse movies than this, but Windbag The Sailor just about holds its head above water {pun intended} because of the always lovable trio at its core, watchable fluff it be.

6/10

A retired barge captain entertains customers in a pub with tall tales of days at sea. He gets caught out when he is tricked into captaining an unseaworthy ship which is to be scuttled for insurance money.

Mildly amusing film with Will Hay as the ship captain aided by Moore Marriott and Graham Moffat as stowaways. These three would go on to to make other, better, films together. Some racial stereotypes and language are now outdated.

Windbag The Sailor finds Will Hay as a barge captain who loves entertaining the folks at the pub with his tall tales of the sea. On the other side of the pond Hay would be the equivalent of Gabby Hayes telling those tall tales of the west in all those cowboy pictures.

But he works his charm on Evelyn Varden who sponsors a troop of Sea Scouts one of them Graham Moffatt who along with Moore Marriott was making his first appearance as a second banana to Will Hay.

Hay gets to be captain of a freighter that's a sea going disaster, but he does not know that this canal barge captain is supposed to be the dupe and go down with the ship that his crew is planning to scuttle for the insurance. Of course Hay knows nothing about running an ocean going vessel and that's half the comedy in Windbag The Sailor.

The other half involves Hay and Moffatt and Marriott being rescued by cannibals off Africa and their lives being saved by the portable battery operated radio that Moffatt won't leave the ship without. Funniest part of the movie is our three heroes sailing away from the ship with Hay doing his best Charles Laughton cast adrift from the Bounty.

A special providence seems to save this trio in all their films as they sure don't get by on their own abilities. Windbag The Sailor is a very funny film, holding up well for a movie now 80 years old.