Checkmate

Old movies (and new ones for that matter!) exist in a perpetual present yet often represent the interaction of representatives of completely different eras.

Thus in this breezy little quota quickie we find Sir Felix Aylmer aged only 46, yet looking no younger than he did over thirty years later when I remember seeing him on TV every week in 'All Gas and Gaiters' in a rare lead flanked by dapper, shockingly youthful versions of fellow stage veterans Maurice Evans and Donald Wolfit, directed by the sixty year-old George Pearson (who later ruefully recalled that quota quickies was "the only field open to the few pioneers remaining from the silent film days").