We'll Smile Again

This was one of four films made by Flanagan and Allen for John Baxter at British National.This is not screened anywhere.The copy I have only lasts 55 minutes and ends abruptly.I do not believe that a full copy exists.It's a daft story about Nazi spies in a film studio giving coded messages through a film.Bud and Ches indulge in typical routines.However the fact that the print has lost 38 minutes makes it difficult to assess how good the film was.

Bud Flanagan gets the lion's share of this Flanagan & Allen vehicle, which is amusing enough but not a patch on John Baxter's later films with the boys and rife with naughty words and sentiments that earned it a stern disclaimer from Talking Pictures.

Although brought up to date with a joke about Hitler, plenty of the routines (like the obnoxious waiter and how not to pay for a drink in a bar) obviously originated on the music hall stage (while Flanagan is actually asked at one point "What's a Greek urn?").

Since it's set in a film studio there are the usual joke about Yes men and xenophobic humour at the expense of a Jewish producer and a Prussian director with a monocle (as Flanagan observes "There are a lot of foreigners on this film, aren't there?").

It now being wartime the studio turns out be swarming with foreign agents; with the statuesque Phyllis Stanley reprising her Mata Hari from 'The Next of Kin'.

A typical propaganda film on the careless talk cost lives theme. A silly story but with Bud Flanagan it breezes along. Always nice to see Peggy Dexter, only 3 flics, as a bit of eye candy. Entertaining.