Sid "What a Performance!" Field stars as an idiot barrow boy in Cromwellian London. He gets involved with Margaret Lockwood and intrigue over efforts to get Charles II his throne.
This was the last film directed by Walter Forde, just as Sid's star-making LONDON TOWN was Wesley Ruggles' last credit as a director; perhaps Sid wore them out. The movie never seems to make up its mind whether it's a comedy with serious interludes, or a serious drama with comic sequences. Much time is spent showing the audience how miserable the Protectorate was, and it isn't until the final third until it turns into the sort of movie that, had it been made in Hollywood, would have starred Bob Hope or Danny Kaye. That's when Sid does a drag act, a Murphy bed shows up, and Irene Handl appears as a helpful ghost with a removable noggin. It all ends in chaos and confusion, and Charles II restored to the throne.
Margaret Lockwood plays the heroine, and she is far more boisterous than her usual polite "English Rose" roles, She seems to be having fun as the irrepressible Nell Gwyn, having a load of snow dumped on her, and calling His Majesty "Charlie".
Although Forde had been a leading movie director in the 1930s, working in a variety of genres, he seems to have grown tired by this point. He had just passed the half-century mark, tastes were changing, and the British film industry was in crisis, just as it had been when he had entered. Perhaps he decided it was time to bow out gracefully and enjoy retirement. If so, I certainly hope he did over the next thirty-five years. He died in 1984, aged 85. Field was not as fortunate. After thirty years in the music halls, he finally hit the West End in the early 1940s and made three movies, with this the last one. He died the following year, only 45 years of age.
