ON APPROVAL (73) (second viewing: 66)

Directed by: Clive Brook (1943)

Starring: Clive Brook, Beatrice Lillie, Googie Withers, Roland Culver

The Pitch: Edwardian England : a penniless aristocrat and the rich woman he's wooing go on a trial-marriage - accompanied by gate-crashing friends - on a remote Scottish island.

Theo Sez: Comedy of manners rather than farce, meaning a minimum of convoluted plotting - it's in fact rather casual, sometimes overly so (getting the four protagonists on the island together could've used a bit more setting-up), pretty much typified by the fact that Withers plays an American heiress without even a token attempt at an American accent. It gives every appearance of being a diversion, made by theatre-people taking a break from the stage for the benefit of audiences inundated with sober wartime fare - it even kicks off with footage of cannons and fighter planes, prompting the narrator to ask, "Oh dear, is this another war picture?". It's a very Archers moment (along the lines of "This is the universe ; big, isn't it?" in A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH), and the film's charm lies in the way it blends the urbane polish of a West End play with a Powell-like sense of mischief and very British faith in eccentricity - most incredibly when it veers off into a surreal, out-of-nowhere dream sequence (tilted camera, cartoon sound effects, talking moose-heads, Brook in a toga scattering roses in slow motion, Brook and Lillie turning to the camera in unison for a poker-faced "Ho!") : no doubt wartime audiences, all too accustomed to things turning chaotic at a moment's notice, could accommodate this kind of thing better than those of a decade (or even five decades) later. Patchy but delicious comic quadrille, gloriously arch, at its drollest when it's at its driest : "Very well - but you can't stop me wishing you were dead," banters Brook ; "Are you addressing me, sir?" blusters the inevitable passing Colonel ; Brook glances up, smiles civilly, gives it a beat : "I see your point..." [Second viewing, May 2014: All of the above remains true - and I'd watch the film again in a heartbeat - it's just that "patchy but delicious" movies with overly casual plotting no longer make my Top 10 lists like they did in the days when pre-1960 classics were a rare and precious gift. This was actually one of the first DVDs I ever bought, and I watched it a few days later because I had nothing else to watch. How did we ever survive, etc.]