Public Nuisance No. 1

I looked at a Pathescope cutdown of this movie (78 minutes trimmed to 45), an early cut-glass farce written by Val Guest (his second screen credit) and directed by Marcel Varnel. Like all examples of the peculiarly British subgenre, it relies upon speed to carry the audience along, never giving them a chance to think. Rich Arthur Riscoe -- who suggests Arthur Treacher to my febrile mind -- loves shopgirl Frances Day. She like him, but think everyone should do something. Therefore, with the connivance of his manservant, Claude Dampier -- who doesn't suggest Arthur Treacher -- he and she head to France, where he tries to engineer the takeover of a hotel where all the guests seem to be elderly, bearded gentlemen and their young and pretty nieces, while masquerading as a waiter there.

While the basic idea is good, and the setting leaves open the possibilities of some silly and risqué situations, the opportunities don't seem to be taken full advantage of (perhaps they were in the missing half hour). The pacing suggests that Varnel thought the audience would be continually convulsed with laughter, resulting in an erratic movie until the final gag. Well, they would all do better.

Riscoe himself doesn't seem very funny. He had hit the movies two or three years earlier in a double-act with Wayne Naunton, doing Englishmen Abroad movies that seem rather dull Crazy Comedies. After this, three more movies through 1941, and then silence. Apparently Riscoe was far better suited to the stage, where he appeared in shows with music by Cole Porter and Richard Rodgers through the 1950s. He died in 1954, aged 58.