Way back at film 10 on this challenge (Trouble Brewing) I made the comment that it felt like ‘a live
action Wallace & Gromit’ film with ‘action, inane comedy, fun slapstick,
and unlikely romantic couplings.’ If that was true of the earlier film, it is
doubly true of Let George Do It which
features a comic bakery sequence which wouldn’t feel out of place in A Close Shave or A Matter of Loaf and Death. Something about the innocuous and clumsy
heroics of Formby’s character, notably the visual gags and slapstick, calls to
mind those later British animated heroes – likely because Nic Park knows his
cinema history and likes a bit of Formby.
This film may be more famous as “the one where George Formby
punches Hitler”, but that reputation arguably conceals a more complex narrative
than Come on George, while also
revisiting most of the basic concepts seen in Formby’s Ealing films to date:
mistaken identity, unconvincing romantic couple, ukulele numbers, and broad
slapstick. Here, Formby is George Hepplewhite, a ukulele player in variety act
the Dinki-Doo’s, who is mistaken for a British spy (posing as a ukulele player)
en route to Norway to uncover a spy ring responsible for passing on convoy information
to German U boats. In Bergen, Formby meets up with band leader and Nazi agent Mendez
(Garry Marsh), his assistant Slim Selwyn (Romney Brent), and
receptionist-cum-undercover British agent Mary Wilson (Phyllis Calvert). Formby
agrees to help the war effort, mainly to impress Mary (and his mum), finds the
key to decode the secret messages (Morse code hidden in radio broadcasts of the
band’s performances) and thwarts Mendez’ plans.
While the wartime premise of later Will Hay comedy The Ghost of St Michael’s (1941) felt
forced, here it is integral to the narrative, the characters and the setting of
Bergen ‘before the war spread.’ That is most obvious in the infamous dream
sequence: having been drugged, and dumped back in his hotel room, George
machine guns Mendez and Selwyn, only to reveal swastikas on their underwear;
takes off in a one-man barrage balloon for Berlin, and ends up thumping Hitler
in the face. It is highly unusual, not so much for the propaganda values
(everyone from Batman and Donald Duck to Charlie Chaplin were lining up to
fictionally take on Hitler), as for the place of dream sequences in Ealing
films. Given the studio’s reputation lies in documentary-realism, few of its
films feature anything that could be regarded as fantasy, and dream sequences
are particularly infrequent (Dead of
Night and The Love Lottery are
the most obvious examples here), so to find one in a Formby film is unusual,
particularly given the film sticks to the familiar structure and content
elsewhere.
The film does feel different in other areas: the
cinematography departs from the high key, well-lit approach seen in other
Formby films to one comfortable with darker tones, and starker use of lighting.
Several of the musical sequences feature spotlights on a dancer, with mobile
spotlights following her, and leaving the rest of the room in darkness; while
the dock-set scenes of blackout conditions are full of dense shadows and sharp
angles of light – a lighting technique that plays into the comic fun the film
has with identifying characters by torchlight, and Formby and others grabbing
the wrong hands in the dark. Alongside more obvious visual techniques, the use
of soundtrack is particularly strong: the music parallels elements of the
narrative from the opening titles, with little bursts of morse code worked into
the score (which recurs later in the band sequences). Formby’s musical numbers
are also worked into a more traditional setting of a hotel band performing at a
Bergen hotel.
This sense of pushing beyond existing Formby work does not
mean abandoning what makes these films work: Formby’s physical antics. Those
are most clearly demonstrated in the bakery sequence mentioned above.
Continuing on from a scene where George was searching Mendez’ room (and hiding
from Mendez), a camera with images of the secret key falls out of Mendez’s
window. Following it, George gets an electric shock from overhead wires,
crashes into a bakery and tries to grab the camera: it, and George, move from
room to room through the bakery, falling into a vat of flour, being doused with
water, mixed by a huge machine, chopped up, dumped onto a conveyor belt, thrust
into tins, and put into an oven. While not all of these happen to George, the
very mechanical, clockwork nature of the process becomes comical – while not as
perfectly timed as the Chaplin routine in Modern
Times (or, indeed, the Wallace & Gromit films that it obviously
inspired), this is pure Formby physical comedy, and it remains the film’s comic
highpoint, well ahead of Fuhrer-punching.
Of course, Formby’s other tics also come out: the character
is sexually inexperienced, awkward around women, but somehow the focus of
romantic attention. When Iris (Coral Browne) attempts to seduce him, Formby
reacts like a little kid, rolling around on the bed, and his interest in Mary
appears to be closely related to his desire to impress his mother. While the
films only flirt with realism, the idea that an undercover British agent would
fall for Formby’s foolishness and risk endangering her cover... well, it is
another example of a female character acting uncharacteristically in these
films, but by no means the first. It is also noticeable that apart from
Calvert’s Mary, the only other speaking parts for women are the unidentified
wife of Oscar (Bernard Lee), Iris, and a hotel receptionist. That said, Mary is
at least professional and intelligent, even if George has to single-handedly
rescue her at the end.
So, with strong physical comedy, interesting creative
elements, that dream sequence, and the usual mix of Formby elements, this ranks
alongside Trouble Brewing as one of
the stronger Ealing Formby films, but probably fails to top Turned Out Nice Again. And perhaps one
of the more curious elements the film has to offer is a brief flirtation with what
we would now describe as intertextuality (or world building): an advertising
bill for ‘Yellow Ochre’ at the Pier Theatre on a pillar in the dock’s waiting
room – the play that was at the centre of the recently released Ealing film, Return to Yesterday (1940).
Next time, we bid adieu to Formby, but remain at war, in Dunkirk (1958)...
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