Brian Aherne is The Great Garrick, the famous 18th-century English actor who is all talent and ego. He's invited to perform in Paris by the famous Comedy Francaise but he demurs, thinking it infra dig, until he's persuaded to go to France and "teach the French how to act." The members of the French troupe get word of this and plan to trick Aherne by taking over a wayside inn, pretending to be the staff, and engaging in all sorts of routines designed to drive Aherne nuts. Only at the end will they reveal themselves, having convinced Aherne that they are as talented as he is.
Aherne is a pretty sharp guy though and he quickly picks up on the fact that he's dealing with actors instead of waiters. I mean -- he knows an actor when he sees one. So while the troupe exhaust themselves with all kinds of antic shenanigans -- a waiter goes nuts, a duel to the death takes place in the dining room -- Aherne yawns and ignores it all.
But then he makes a mistake. Olivia De Havilland shows up accidentally at the inn. Aherne takes her for just another performer in on the plot to embarrass him. They fall in love. It all ends happily.
I had a tough time with it. It's based on a stage play and it shows. It isn't so much that the sets are stagy. It's that the story is played out like a filmed stage production. When an actor has something important or funny to say, he stops and turns his face to the camera. The effect is uncanny and a little unsettling. Every gesture is outlandishly broad. The viewer is quickly exhausted.
And, to be honest, the plot itself may have potential but the potential isn't really developed. Maybe I'm getting cranky and losing my sense of humor. That's what my psychiatrist, Dr. Francois M. Arouet, keeps telling me, in between hints that I ought to pay my bills more regularly. I never found "Charlie's Aunt" funny either, and I have to squeeze to get a couple of smiles out of "A Midsummer Night's Dream." But I think I'm right when I claim that this play lacks much in the way of laugh power. I've always been right. Well, except once, when I thought I was wrong but it turned out I'd been right all along.
Here's an example of one of many duds. Aherne and his comic sidekick, Edward Everett Horton, are about to clamber aboard a carriage, and Horton makes some remark about all the friends that Aherne has acquired over the years. "I played Shylock in Dublin," Aherne replies earnestly, "I have no friends." There is a pause for laughter.
Is there anything funny in this exchange? If there is, it slipped by my apperceptive apparatus. What's amusing about Shylock in Dublin? Is there some anti-Semitic content that I'm missing? Is it that the Irish of the period were being conquered and exploited by the English and that all the English, Aherne included, were loathed in Ireland?
There's nothing particularly bad about Brian Aherne's performance though. He's supposed to be a narcissistic ham and he certainly gets that across. (It's the Comedy Francaise that's ennervating.) And Olivia De Havilland as the damsel in distress is delightful. Her beauty combined in an unexpected way the darkness of her hair and eyes with the porcelain quality of her skin. Yet it's more than just her appearance. She's full of a kind of breathless virginity. She's extremely feminine. She might welcome a man as much out of a desire to nurture him as out of sheer horniness. The musical score, tinged with symbolism, is easy to listen to.
Well, I'll not make any kind of final judgment because I think this is the kind of movie that might appeal to a lot of people for different reasons, while leaving some of the rest of us a little cold. If you don't get with the program after the first fifteen or twenty minutes, you might as well give up because the rest of it doesn't really go anywhere.
Aherne is a pretty sharp guy though and he quickly picks up on the fact that he's dealing with actors instead of waiters. I mean -- he knows an actor when he sees one. So while the troupe exhaust themselves with all kinds of antic shenanigans -- a waiter goes nuts, a duel to the death takes place in the dining room -- Aherne yawns and ignores it all.
But then he makes a mistake. Olivia De Havilland shows up accidentally at the inn. Aherne takes her for just another performer in on the plot to embarrass him. They fall in love. It all ends happily.
I had a tough time with it. It's based on a stage play and it shows. It isn't so much that the sets are stagy. It's that the story is played out like a filmed stage production. When an actor has something important or funny to say, he stops and turns his face to the camera. The effect is uncanny and a little unsettling. Every gesture is outlandishly broad. The viewer is quickly exhausted.
And, to be honest, the plot itself may have potential but the potential isn't really developed. Maybe I'm getting cranky and losing my sense of humor. That's what my psychiatrist, Dr. Francois M. Arouet, keeps telling me, in between hints that I ought to pay my bills more regularly. I never found "Charlie's Aunt" funny either, and I have to squeeze to get a couple of smiles out of "A Midsummer Night's Dream." But I think I'm right when I claim that this play lacks much in the way of laugh power. I've always been right. Well, except once, when I thought I was wrong but it turned out I'd been right all along.
Here's an example of one of many duds. Aherne and his comic sidekick, Edward Everett Horton, are about to clamber aboard a carriage, and Horton makes some remark about all the friends that Aherne has acquired over the years. "I played Shylock in Dublin," Aherne replies earnestly, "I have no friends." There is a pause for laughter.
Is there anything funny in this exchange? If there is, it slipped by my apperceptive apparatus. What's amusing about Shylock in Dublin? Is there some anti-Semitic content that I'm missing? Is it that the Irish of the period were being conquered and exploited by the English and that all the English, Aherne included, were loathed in Ireland?
There's nothing particularly bad about Brian Aherne's performance though. He's supposed to be a narcissistic ham and he certainly gets that across. (It's the Comedy Francaise that's ennervating.) And Olivia De Havilland as the damsel in distress is delightful. Her beauty combined in an unexpected way the darkness of her hair and eyes with the porcelain quality of her skin. Yet it's more than just her appearance. She's full of a kind of breathless virginity. She's extremely feminine. She might welcome a man as much out of a desire to nurture him as out of sheer horniness. The musical score, tinged with symbolism, is easy to listen to.
Well, I'll not make any kind of final judgment because I think this is the kind of movie that might appeal to a lot of people for different reasons, while leaving some of the rest of us a little cold. If you don't get with the program after the first fifteen or twenty minutes, you might as well give up because the rest of it doesn't really go anywhere.