The Common Round

I don't understand the meaning of the title of this 3-reel short subject, but this short subject emphasizes the values of old-fashioned British public school philosophy: trust in God and stick it out. George Zucco is the headmaster who tells his boys that. Twenty years later, one of them is at a medical mission in darkest Africa, surrounding by natives who are wavering from the Christian God and modern medicine in the face of an unseen witch doctor. He sticks it out, hoping that help will come. The other is trying to get those supplies through in the face of bureaucratic red tape.

It has certainly not aged well, but it's interesting that the headmaster is played by George Zucco and the missionary is played by Torin Thatcher, a couple of actors who specialized, in later years, in playing villains in horror movies.

LATER: I am informed -- thanks, Brooksie! -- that the title is derived from a hymn, and refers to doing one's usual job, often in the face of opposition.

"The Common Round" is an earnest, explicitly Christian short film, doubtless intended to provide its viewers with moral uplift. I imagine that the target audience was Sunday school teachers and their charges. Manners and morals have changed so much since 1936, however, that it is today almost impossible to watch it and keep a straight face. Even when it was first released, indeed, I doubt that general audiences would have appreciated it in the desired spirit.

The setting is a British colony in Africa. Martin is the pastor of a beleaguered medical mission in a plague zone far up country. Medicines are running out, nursing staff are dropping like flies, and the natives are getting restless (egged on by a sinister witch doctor). Several lines have a familiar ring: "No news of the relief party", "If only those drums would stop," "Death to the white man!", etc. Ironically, the depiction of Africans in this Christian production is even less sympathetic than might be expected from a commercial film of the era. They are all either pathetic or menacing. Even the plague is said to be their fault (for refusing to heed hygiene instructions). "We mustn't laugh at their ignorance," says Martin. "There's a lot of good in them really" - only we don't see it here.

The saintly, soft-spoken Martin is dreadfully priggish throughout. What sustains him is the recollection of moral homilies delivered by his old headmaster at prep school. The whole film is very much in the vein of Newbolt's poem "Vitai Lampada" ("But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks, 'Play up! Play up! and play the game!'"). "Beyond the Fringe" was parodying this sort of thing fifty years ago, but "The Common Round" to modern eyes is almost beyond parody.