The Phantom Light

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.

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.

With its wafer thin plot, this relies on the likeability of its cast and it's got just enough of that to make this entertaining from beginning to end. Gainsborough reused the story six years later as BACK ROOM BOY with Arthur Askey and although this won't be in anyone's top ten, it least it doesn't have Arthur Askey in it!

As naff as this is, I think I enjoyed it. I might even watch it again sometime. Why - because it was fun without being a comedy, exciting without being a thriller and watchable without being particularly well made. It relies on its two leads: Binnie Hale and professional cockney Gordon Harker. He's your typical grumpy but loveable cor blimey gov'nr cockney and he really carries this single handedly. He's also got some lovely old forgotten East End expressions. Surely it's time to resurrect this one: "I'll lay a pound to a sausage." It must mean something?

Just as I'm convinced that Genevieve Tobin is Joan Blondell's sister, Binnie Hale obviously must also be another sibling. She was an established actress on the stage but she hadn't quite mastered movie acting, nevertheless she's still better than a lot of established stars over in California. Looking at her, it's hard to believe she's actually the sister of Jessie Matthew's other half - whom, if you're familiar with Sonnie Hale - let's just say he didn't have the classic movie star looks! She's actually rather lovely (which you'd expect if she's Joan Blondell's long lost English sister!)

Some actresses have a magnetic screen presence because of their talent, Miss Hale might not exhibit a lot of talent but she certainly exhibits a lot of her legs - very nice legs too! Since Joseph Breen and his cohorts over in America had by 1935 banned anything remotely saucy, it fell on the shoulders of the British film industry to provide the public with a little bit of sexiness and Binnie Hale in shorts and negligee - not just a negligee but a wet negligee, certainly ticks that box.

Gainsborough in the early thirties didn't really do quality, they just made the sort of stuff you could veg out to with your brain switched off after a hard day's work. They were owned by Gaumont-British so had the same sort of relationship First National did to Warner Brothers. They made cheap simple, basic entertainment for the masses. So if you're not expecting too much from this, I'll lay a pound to a sausage that you might just enjoy it.

The Phantom Light is directed by Michael Powell and adapted from the Joan Roy Byford and Evadne Price play The Haunted Light. It stars Gordon Harker, Binnie Hale, Donald Calthrop, Milton Rosmer, Ian Hunter and Herbert Lomas. Cinematography is by Roy Kellino and music by Louis Levy.

Harker stars as lighthouse keeper Sam Higgins, who gets more than he bargained for when he takes up employment at the North Stack Lighthouse out on the foggy Welsh coast.

Some time before he formed half of the classic film making partnership with Emeric Pressburger, Michael Powell was a 1930s purveyor of the "quota-quickie" British movie. Not many of those films remain in print, thankfully this delightful blend of comedy and suspense is now in home format circulation. Out of Gainsborough Pictures, The Phantom Light harks back to a wonderful time of sincerity in film making, the acting mannerisms are as correct as the dialect (it's so nice to hear the term Michaelmas used), the locale is beautifully realised and maximum dramatic impact is garnered from the minimalist settings (three parts of the film is set in the lighthouse itself). Powell proves to be adept at eking out eerie atmospherics from the story, aided superbly by Roy Kellino's photography, while it's no small triumph to actually blend the comedy with the drama and not hurt the flow of the film.

Tan-y-Bwlch and lummee, what a night!

It's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, Hale is annoyingly high pitched and shoe-horned into the fray, though her beautiful legs go up to her armpits and distract the red blooded amongst us, and the actual turn into the suspense realm comes, considering the running time, a bit too late in the story. But the faults are actually minor ones and they don't ultimately affect the enjoyment on offer for the classic film fan. It very much can be seen as a precursor and influence to the great Will Hay pictures, Ask A Policeman & Oh! Mr. Porter, and if you want links away from the thematics and plotting? Which are joyously similar, then Herbert Lomas was in Ask A Policeman and Louis Levy scored both. It doesn't have the slapstick that dominated the Hay movies, here the wit is dry and neatly pitched as polar opposites are thrust together under one lighted roof, but this is more a light hearted thriller than a comedy drama. With excellent locations used (Devon/Wales), and a director taking his early tentative steps to greatness (yes you read right), it's a film that has enough reasons to check it out regardless of story. As it is, it's pretty darn good anyway. And I'll be back to say the same thing after my next viewing at Michaelmas. 7.5/10

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.