Stuff

One of my absolute favourite mad comedy films is the 1941 production “Hellzapoppin'”. If you want to watch it, it’s on home media I am sure and it does appear that there is a copy on YouTube.

The film stars comedy act Olsen and Johnson and was adapted from their Broadway show. By all accounts, the stage show was total madness and, while some of this madness is still here, the unpredictability aspect has gone somewhat.

It is basically a ‘putting on a show’ movie. There are many familiar faces, including Martha Raye, Elisha Cook Jnr, Hugh Herbert (who plays a crazy magician), Shemp Howard (of The Three Stooges as the projectionist) and many more.

The film never forgets it is a film, being shown to an audience (in a cinema). They break the fourth wall often, there are jokes at the expense of the projectionist and other films, strange leaps in format (for example, suddenly becoming a western), running gags and general madness. Oh, and a soppy love story and multiple musical interludes.

Sadly, it’s not a film that gets shown in cinemas any more, even at film clubs and you do need to watch it with an audience if you can. The love story is rather draggy at times, but when the stars are on screen it’s a hoot.

The 1930s moving into the 1940s was a golden time for film production. Many of the films we still love came from that era.

“Gone With The Wind” was 1939. So was “The Wizard of Oz”.

A film with amazing use of colour and a symphonic score is “The Adventures of Robin Hood”.

Hitchcock was still a great director at this time. Fritz Lang made “M” with Peter Lorre (1931).

We haven’t mentioned the Marx Brothers, Warner’s gangster movies, the ‘monster’ movies from Universal, such as “Frankenstein”. Or Andy Hardy. Even Disney’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” (1937).

If I was going to pick out just one film that has not yet been mentioned as a must see, it’s “Goodbye, Mr Chips” (1939), if only for the performance of Robert Donat: