It is tempting to see Champagne
Charlie through the lens of later comments Michael Balcon made about
projecting Britain as a ‘patron and parent of great writing, painting and
music’ and the necessity of moving beyond an aesthetic based purely in realism.
While it is possible to read the film in relation to its wartime production
context, this story of comic rivalry among Victorian music hall stars seems to
have its eye on a wider range of issues and approaches.
Directed by ex-documentarian Cavalcanti, with many experienced
Ealing stalwarts (including director of photography Wilkie Cooper,
scriptwriters Austin Melford, John Dighton and Angus Macphail, with Michael
Relph on art direction, T.E.B. Clarke contributing to song-writing and Douglas
Slocombe operating the camera) this is close to the heart of Ealing’s
production ethos at the time. And while it is true that there are elements here
of the traditional and community-minded Ealing that we’ve seen in other films –
music hall rivalry is put aside when all are threatened with closure
(cooperation transcends competition, according to Charles Barr) – this appears
to be a minor note in a film more interested in individuals, drinking songs and
class mobility (or the lack thereof).
Star Tommy Trinder plays George Leybourne (nee Saunders, his stage name changes
twice, from Saunders to Leybourne to ‘Champagne Charlie,’ after a particularly
famous song), a miner who comes to London and is taken on as a comic singer
first at the Elephant & Castle pub, then at the Mogador club, where music
hall legend Bessie Bellwood (Betty Warren) schools him in his new career. Partnered
with songs from Mogador’s resident writer, Duckworth / Ducky (Robert Wyndham),
Leybourne is soon a popular act at the hall, which attracts comparisons and
rivalries with the Great Vance (Stanley Holloway), ‘the greatest comic singer
in England’.
The rivalry – and reluctant friendship – that develops
between Leybourne and Vance is the heart of this film, thematically and
structurally: there is a long montage just under halfway through, where the
scenes cut quickly between a series of competing songs about drink. From
Leybourne’s tune about ale, to Vance’s about gin, from a French-styled
‘burgundy, claret and port’ routine to sailor’s rum-based jig, from the ‘brandy
and seltzer boys’ to ‘a glass of sherry wine’, the film covers almost all the
major alcoholic drinks going, before ending up with Leybourne’s ‘Champagne
Charlie,’. There is a glee and bounce to these scenes, a lightness of touch
that is absent from many of Ealing’s wartime productions, partly a result of
the changing circumstance of the war, but also the choice of genre and era
(Ealing enjoyed the Victorian and Edwardian periods, returning to them again in
Pink String and Sealing Wax (1945)
and Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949),
among others). This is one of very few Ealing musicals – and most of those are
star-led by George Formby or, as here, Tommy Trinder – and this comes closest
to using the musical sequences to inform the plot and characters.
It would be easy to criticise the film given that very
little happens for the bulk of it, and the occasional stabs at a more
traditional narrative, such as a contrived duel between Leybourne and Vance,
the threat by agitators to close down the lewd and satiric space of the music
hall, or the concurrent class-ridden drama
of Bessie’s daughter Dolly (Jean Kent), her upper class lover Lord Petersfield
(Peter deGraaf) and his father, the Duke (Austin Trevor), who knew Bessie when
he was younger and is on the committee that proposes to shut down the music
hall... simply take focus away from the enjoyable music hall setting and
performance. That is largely because of the strength of Trinder and Holloway,
who make no pretence towards realism but give larger-than-life portraits of two
egotistical but talented comedians. Although given less screen time Holloway’s
inherent snobbery and one-upmanship is an enjoyable foil to Trinder’s usual
cockiness, and their bickering (sung or otherwise) keeps the film going.
While never particularly showy, the film also looks
impressive, with nice touches around setting and camera work: an opening camera
angle down on the Elephant and Castle that tracks over the rooftops to follow
Leybourne and his brother in through the pub’s courtyard; the parting of the
brothers, as they take different paths off screen; the presentation of the
different halls, from the Mogador to Gatti’s to the Oxford; and the focus on
specific Mogador patrons when we are first introduced to the space, and then
again at the end, as we leave it. Cavalcanti also experiments with deep focus
cinematography in several shots of the Mogador, shooting from the stage and
showing the whole audience – including Vance, who walks in at the back of the
room, and pauses on a staircase to watch Leybourne perform. Cavalcanti doesn’t
immediately cut to Vance, to confirm who it is, but lingers on that long shot,
with Vance framed within the audience and architecture of the hall.
It is curious that Barr chooses to criticise the film for
being too innocent, while Perry dismisses it as too jolly and genteel: it is
the very lightness of the film, the departure from realism (there is rarely any
sense that this is a realistic depiction of a Victorian music hall, or indeed
of Victorian London more generally), that gives it coherence. When the film
drifts away from that towards issues and social comment – notably whether Lord
Petersfield’s life will be ruined if he marries a ‘mere’ music hall performer –
it stumbles, and has to pull itself back to topic – the centrality of
individual performance and comic routines.
Next time, our Tommy Trinder mini-marathon ends as we go down under for Bitter Springs (1950)...
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