Give Us the Moon

What waste of a good cast! Was it ever considered funny?

Only managed to sit through 20 minutes before giving up,just seemed to meander with a lot of pointless smart talking,but you could definitely tell Jean Simmons in her 1st roll was going to be a star was a natural and shone in every scene I saw.

This was the latest addition to my Margaret Lockwood collection.What a change to see her playing farce as Nina a beautiful Russian girl whose imagination races into overdrive.She is teamed with Vic Oliver who I can only describe seems to be a cross between an Austrian and Groucho Marx.Fortunately Vic spares us his violin playing in this film!!Nina always jumps to ridiculous assumptions before anyone has had a chance to speak and Vic Oliver is the glib mastermind of a group of layabouts who style themselves "The White Elephants" by their refusal to work.I did not recognise the actor playing Peter Pyke the no good wastrel son of a hotel magnate.

All through it reminded me of a British version of a Marx Brothers comedy although there was not a Margaret Dupont character for Vic to play off but there was the usual gullible hotel staff.I feel sure the producers were heavily influenced by The Brothers' antics when commissioning the screenplay.Yes there was some slapstick but for me apart from ogling Margaret Lockwood, I only found it mildly humorous.Comedy can so age over a period of 60 years.

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.

"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."