Stormy Weather

Very much the Carry On films of the 1930s complete with enough double entendres to make Barbara Windsor blush. This isn't quite the best of the Aldwych farces but if you like a proper old style comedy or are just interested to see what made people laugh between the wars, you'll enjoy this.

We are conditioned to enjoy the familiar. Consequently a lot of us love classic 1930s comedy such as Laurel and Hardy, Will Hay and Marx Brothers This slightly more obscure and forgotten style of comedy takes a little while to get into but these professionally made, tried and tested pictures from "The Aldwych Gang" - which are funny - endear themselves quickly to us.

Tom Walls, the leader of the group and director of the films was immensely popular in the thirties but I am not sure he comes across as a likeable person. It might be just his screen persona but these days he seems a little arrogant and unpleasant. As someone doing a 1930s Sid James, some degree of likeability feels necessary. It's difficult to root for someone you don't like.

I've mentioned that these were the Carry On films of the day and that Tom Walls was their version of Sid James. There are two other similar roles: Ralph Lynn, the silly toff makes a fabulous Kenneth Williams and Yvonne Arnaud, the sex starved matron is Joan Sims. Then there's the hilarious Robertson Hare is....well he's just unique - my new comedy hero!

So if you fancy a silly story with people chasing along corridors running into the wrong bedrooms, losing their trousers and hiding strange women under their beds, give this a go.

"Stormy Weather" is the story of a British couple who are happy...though not together. Mrs. Craggs is an annoying and dopey woman who cheats on her husband with a variety of men. While you would think this would be a serious problem, Sir Duncan Craggs doesn't mind at all, as it gives him the excuse to have his own affairs...and with women who aren't so annoying nor vacuous.

When Sir Duncan is appointed to the board of directors of a department store chain, he takes the job seriously and works to make it more efficient. Through one of his on site visits, he makes the acquaintance of two managers...one efficient and a weasel and the other inefficient and also a weasel. Somehow all three men as well as Mrs. Craggs all get pulled into a weird adventure in Chinatown....how and what's in store for them is something you'll have to see for yourself.

This is a cute comedy of manners...and well worth seeing. I nearly scored this one an 8 and think it's well written and clever. The only problems with the film depend on how politically correct and how easily offended you are. As a retired history teacher, such things didn't surprise me and I don't think you can apply today's standards to films...otherwise you'll never watch much of anything. But there are a couple offensive racial/ethnic slurs in the film...so hold on tight as you watch!

Director/star Tom Walls and the justly famous Aldwych farceur Ben Travers have most successfully brought off an extremely difficult and ingeniously clever balancing trick with Stormy Weather in which farce and drama are masterfully combined so that neither element undermines but rather re-inforces the effectiveness of the other. So far as the Travers' screenplay is concerned, this brilliant feat is accomplished not only by judicious writing and inspired cross-cutting but by creatively definitive and vigorously drawn characterizations. Admirably, Travers has also seized upon the freedom offered by the screen to make full use of frequent changes of scene and has invested his script with plenty of opportunities for moodily magnificent production values.

As for the direction, Walls has not only induced his players to give of their best (as we would have every reason to anticipate), but unexpectedly reveals himself to be a real craftsman with atmosphere (in which of course he is aided by Philip Tannura's misty lighting, Vetchinsky's eye-catching sets and Roome's pacey film editing).

Most admirably, Walls has persuaded Ralph Lynn to tone down his usual silly ass shenanigans. He's even funnier here and much more sympathetic with his child-like comebacks and inherent faith in his own disabilities. And I loved his sense of justice (or rather injustice) which he so strenuously pursues despite multiple dissuasions.

Poor old Robertson Hare, of course, is once again lumbered as the aggressively self-promoting fall-guy of the piece, but superbly manages to make his Bullock both humorous and humorless. Yvonne Arnaud is also as tizzy as ever, but this time she is given some genuinely funny lines and hilarious bits of business.

In the support cast, a special accolade must be awarded to the languidly exotic Stella Moya (here making the first of only four movie appearances), who contributes a truly charismatic study of an ill-used Chinese lass. Gordon James and Engelmann's other henchmen are likewise exotically colorful. And along with Stella Moya and company, we must not forget the lovely Veronica Rose who enlivens a couple of scenes with Tom Walls. Which brings us to Mr Walls himself. Walls invests his own impersonation with a delightfully off-handed cynical wit. Despite the character's inherent lack of charm, Walls manages the remarkable feat of making this self-centered, self-important little Caesar not only screamingly funny but even warm and companionable.

This film is wonderful. Wacky, politically incorrect and more risque than you might expect from a movie from this era.

Tom Walls who plays Sir Duncan Craggs and also directed is a comic genius. Don't miss it.

This film features a racy plot and crackling dialogue. The two principal characters, Sir Duncan Craggs and his Franco-Russian wife Louise, have a free-wheeling morality in respect of extra-marital affairs, each fully cognisant of the other's infidelities, but tempering reproach with civilised restraint, in a manner somewhat reminiscent of a Lubitsch sex comedy.

Their upper-class hijinks spill over from the West End of town houses and night clubs to a Limehouse Chinese laundry which acts as a front for a disreputable doss-house, with suggestions that it might be an opium den and a haunt of prostitutes. The film neatly contrasts the two milieus by a change of visual style, with the seedy locales shot in murky soft focus.

Yvonne Arnaud is delicious as Craggs' wife Louise, fracturing the English language with every sentence she utters. Stella Moya, as a beautiful Chinese girl, has little to do, but is suitably alluring. Robertson Hare's role is smaller than those of the other three leads, and he is well matched by Norma Varden as his domineering wife. (He does, however, get to lose his trousers at one point, a trademark feature of his.) A young Graham Moffatt, in an early role before joining the Will Hay team, makes the most of his single scene. The actresses playing the shop girls and secretaries in the early part of the film are all unbilled, undeservedly so.

The adaptation of the Aldwych farces to the screen was not always successful, but it is hard to fault this one.