Give Us the Moon

It is three years after the end of the Second World War, and the government has made good on its promises of a future and a job for everyone. All except for Peter Graves. He may have been a hot-shot fighter pilot during the war, but now he is quite content to live in his father's latest luxury hotel and eat out in quest of adventure and beautiful women. He finds both at a restaurant which is the front for a club called the White Elephants, all sworn to observing the world's problems and doing nothing about them. He is smitten with Russian Margaret Lockwood and her eleven-year-old sister, played by fifteen-year-old Jean Simmons in her movie debut. He swears to obey the club's rules and never work. But disaster strikes! His father, Frank Cellier, leaves the hotel, making him manager..... and work is forbidden by the laws of this new society he has sworn to uphold.

It's another movie based on one of the silly novels written by S. J. Simon and Caryl Brahms, a series of collaborations they had begun when Miss Brahms wanted to write a novel about killing a ballet critic she hated. It's a pleasure to see Miss Lockwood out of her English Rose persona, and she is quite funny. Director Val Guest has assembled a talented collection of farceurs, including Vic Oliver, Irene Handl, and others usually better remembered for their dramatic thesping, including Roland Culver and Gibb McLaughlin. If the pace seems more frantically forced on occasion, the individual bits are certainly funny enough to keep it going.

I really must have a word with my doctor about my medication; I'm hallucinating again! Already reeling from 'Time Flies', Dr. Goebbels would have been completely floored by this garrulous, fascinatingly awful fantasy set in an imaginary future of ease and plenty (Gainsborough Pictures thereafter largely stuck to escaping into a glamorous past that never existed either in films like 'The Wicked Lady').

Enlivened by the presence of a delightful Jean Simmons making her debut as a delinquent schoolgirl and Irene Handl as her hapless headmistress, every prediction it makes about a postwar Britain in which Stafford Cripps wasn't Chancellor of the Exchequer and there was no Cold War (Margaret Lockward plays a Russian!) is so completely wrong it's fascinating!

"Give Us the Moon" has an interesting history as a movie. It's supposed to take place after the end of World War II. But, it was filmed in the middle of the war. One wonders where Gainsborough found the places to film the movie that didn't show some damage from the London bombings. Apparently, the firm's studios weren't damaged or were repaired to cover any scars. The final oddity is that the film actually was released in British theaters in August 1944 - with the end of the war still a year away.

This is a comedy that's based on a 1939 novel, "The Elephant is White" by Caryl Brahms and S.J. Simon. The book is set in Paris, and besides the film setting in London, the authors apparently wrote some additional dialog for the screenplay.

London audiences then weren't wowed by the film, and I think I know why. It's not because of the eccentricity of the story (it's unfair to call it a plot, because it doesn't really have a clear goal or outcome). Crazy, erratic, eccentric and wildly screwball comedies can be very funny and great. But, unless the cast has the Marx Brothers, Laurel and Hardy, or the Three Stooges, it should not be expected to be zany from the start. Then, the comedy really scores. Unfortunately, this was built up as wild comedy, but this cast just doesn't deliver with the screenplay it has. So, it misfires throughout.

This was not a film to boost any actor's career. Margaret Lockwood, Peter Graves and Roland Culver had much better films in their careers. The only noteworthy casting was the first film appearance of Jean Simmons in a small role.

I enjoy clever comedy and slapstick as much as anyone, and especially like British comedy. So, I was disappointed with how flat and "unfunny" was "Give Us the Moon."

I didn't get to see all this movie - I channel-hopped in shortly after it began, and was called away by the phone before it finished. Nevertheless, I intend to track down a copy and enjoy this movie in full. A fun plot, superb cast, and clever writing combine to bring this movie above anything you're likely to get from the plastic formula movies that Hollywood makes today. I'm sure that anyone who has ever felt the urge to procrastinate will identify with someone in this movie!

Now here is a real obscure gem! This film is the story of Peter Pyke, the son of a wealthy hotel owner. Despite his father's insistence, Peter refuses to do anything resembling work, preferring instead to live a carefree life of extravagance, subsidised - of course - by his father. By chance, Peter finds himself in the company of a club of eccentric misfits known as the "White Elephants", whose common bond is their refusal to work, or to do anything that might make them a valuable member of society. The white elephants prefer to make a living by devising unusual and hilarious ways to rip off members of the public, or "suckers" as they are called within the club.

The script is as eccentric as they come, and the dialogue is very witty. It's nonsensical at times, but this only adds to the humour. The best part about this film though, is the wonderful characters. Nina's tall tales about her troubled childhood are hilarious, Sacha, the quintessential con-artist is great and Peter, a playboy with morals, is an excellent lead. For me though, the best character is the dry old fogey Ferdinand, who wouldn't look out of place as the professor of classics in a university, and whose whole life is dedicated to writing a thesis on jealousy. He never gets around to actually putting pen to paper, but he spends plenty of time doing research - by making love to married women and then observing their husbands' reactions. This habit results in him being challenged to a duel by one of his subjects' husbands, and the entire episode is hilarious.

The characters are very likable and I found myself empathising somewhat with their strange and sober logic. For example, Nina tells Peter that she wants her daughter to go to school, because school is where people are taught to be stupid. She wants her daughter to become stupid, she says, because only stupid people are happy. Thus the White Elephants provide an oblique and refreshing view of the world - a cynical picture of humanity from a fencesitter's perspective. The cares of the world do not bother this family of oddballs and by the end of the film, one almost feels as though there is something to be said for avoiding work and contributing nothing to society. The microcosm of the White Elephants Club seems like a much more pleasant place than the world around it. This weird and wonderful film, which is playfully directed, should not be missed!