The Phantom Light

In '30's British films I've always liked the mix of pithy Music Hall humour, mild ghostliness, a frisson of sex, and manly London chaps saving the day, all displayed perfectly in the Phantom Light. Director Michael Powell's best stuff was yet to come of course, but this can be seen as him still learning his craft practising with more inconsequential trifles.

Gordon Harker here shines with some cracking comedy lines handed to him, as the new lighthouse-keeper at a rather ... insular Welsh coastal village, apparently 200 years behind the times with Wrecking ships on the rocks still big business. Ian Hunter is the manly Londoner with all the brains ... er, I think this was his last British film until after the War ended. He was the best King Richard Hollywood ever had! Until the last reel Binnie Hale has no brains but admirably compensates with long legs. Herbert Lomas perfects the character he particularly re-used later in Ask a Policeman and The Ghost Train - he was even back in Powell & Pressburger's I Know Where I'm Going! But the film that borrowed the most from this was Arthur Askey's Back Room Boy from '42, it even looked the same inside the lighthouse!

A pleasant 75 minutes spent in the company of familiar faces and story.

Michael Powell's genius is exploding in wondrous innovations and marvels of imagination already in this early film about Wales. The introduction sets the mood, when a Welsh woman as the station master comes to greet a train with its passenger, the new lighthouse guard, in a fantastic local rural costume like a witch and speaking no word of English but only Welsh,. The hysterical intrigues and events are very much reminding of Hitchcock's "Number Seventeen" three years earlier, the same kind of mix of terror and madness, eccentrics and cluster of colliding events, getting grimmer all the time, but the local atmosphere is the dominating charm. It's about wreckers using the local people's readiness for superstition to operate their wicked business, Hitchcock was to use the same theme in "Jamaica Inn" four years later, and both films are equally successful and irresistibly charming and exciting. There is no Charles Laughton and Maureen O'Hara here, but instead you have Gordon Harker who is the right man for the job, although he gets too much to handle. The story is terrific, and Michael Powell was to use much of the same vein in his later masterpiece "I Know Where I Am Going" in Scotland ten years later.

Very funny British Gainsborough Picture from 1935 with plenty of No-code 'damn' 'ruddy' and 'cor-blimey' -ies along with Binnie Hale's long legs and keen 'how about it' frankness, THE PHANTOM LIGHT is a bookend GHOST TRAIN fog bound mystery set on the shrouded eerie Welsh coast. The photography and settings particularly in the quaint railway scenes in reel one and the village scenes near the end offer the viewer genuine storybook pleasure in that they look completely fake but are not at all. It just happens to naturally all look like some plaster model. Lead actor, music hall star Gordon Harker has some hilarious lines - particularly the closing one: "Lummy! what a night" which would have rocked any Odeon theatre with gales of laughter. Binnie Hale is the Brit Joan Blondell, all perky and silly and ready to cut up her trousers all ready to gad about the lighthouse stairways in hotpants and high heels. Local Welsh eccentricness is on full display with plenty of Popeye style gnarling and eyeball flexing. I thought it was hilarious as (later famous) Director Michael Powell was clearly getting his actors to have fun with their roles. The local policeman is exactly like Constable Plod from the Noddy kids books..all tubby and bug eyed. It is all silly and very funny. The Warner bros pic SHH! THE OCTOPUS of 1935 is a good counterpart from the USA.

I didn't expect much from this obscure film and that was the right approach. The film's pace is a big letdown - it's consistently slow from beginning to end. The scriptwriters couldn't have been bothered with the development of the story, as it is never made clear what is going on. Gordon Harker does quite well and tries his best to enliven the proceedings but it's all in vain.

Superficially, this is just another of the many British comedy/dramas from the era. It has a characteristic manner: a fellow with a humorous take on life, a pretty girl, some intrigue and danger.

What sets this apart are two things.

The first is the setting in Wales, or more precisely among the Welsh. Its an odd sort or layering for me since I think the 30's era English are as different, strange, quaint to me as the Welsh are shown here from the English. The language is emphasized in the setup, first half of the movie. They surely are depicted as alien. At the end, there's a clear balance between evil Welsh and noble ones that come to the rescue. The chief villain of course, the ringmaster, is English of course. That Imperial undercurrent!

The second interesting thing is that the action, about 3/5s of the movie, takes place in an actual lighthouse, most at night. What an amazing challenge this must have been; there are no studio shots that I could discern. Its a small, curved structure with no opportunity to anchor the frame against a wall. There's lots of movement across different levels, as there must be, and some clever (from a staging point of view) movement from inside to outside. I suppose the director made up much of how this appears as he went along.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.