Fiddlers Three (1944)

Fiddlers Three is a British science-fiction film first released in 1944, directed by Harry Watt.  The film stars Tommy Trinder, Frances Day, Sonnie Hale, Francis L. Sullivan and Diana Decker.  It has also been released under the title: While Nero Fiddled.  Our overall rating for this film is: very good.


England, 1943.  Tommy and the Professor, two sailors in the Royal Navy, are on their way back to their Portsmouth base when they see a WREN, Lydia, being molested by a man.  Having rescued Lydia, the boys offer her a lift on the handlebars of their tandem.  As the trio make their way across Salisbury Plain, a thunderstorm breaks.  Whilst they are resting by Stonehenge, a bolt of lightning strikes them and they find themselves transported back 1900 years to Roman occupied Britain.  Mistaken for Druids, Tommy and the Professor are shipped to Rome, a journey that takes a full year.  The Emperor Nero is about to have them sacrificed when Tommy accurately foretells Boudicca’s victory over the Romans at Colchester.  It so happens that Nero is in need of a good soothsayer so he decides to dispense with the Druid slaying formalities.   To prevent Lydia from being sold into slavery, Tommy sets about raising the cash to buy her at auction by selling the Professor, disguised as a woman.  The ruse fails and both Lydia and the Professor end up as pretty playthings of the Emperor Nero.  Meanwhile, the Empress Poppaea has taken a liking to Tommy and plans to lure him into her milk bath, and not because he has a calcium deficiency.  Tommy’s attempts to rescue his friends by distracting Nero by dressing up as a Brazilian beauty are just as fruitless and the three time travellers look as if they are destined to end up as the main course for Nero’s ravenous lions.  Not what you might call a Roman holiday...

Fiddlers Three is a riotous comedy in which Tommy Trinder, one of the top British comedians of his day, does his utmost to raise the morale of a war-weary nation with his indefatigable cheeky chappie humour.  A loose sequel to Sailors Three, this non-stop comedy roller-coaster offered pure escapism from the grind of wartime austerity and is unquestionably one of Trinder’s most entertaining films, even if the plot (if you can follow it) is chaotic nonsense - a cross-between an episode of Irwin Allen’s The Time Tunnel (with Stonehenge serving as a time machine) and a Marx Brothers take on A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum.  The grandeur that was Rome is well and truly trodden into the dust by the time Trinder and his cohorts have finished dishing out their lorryload of panem et circenses.  With Poppaea portrayed as a voracious man-eater and Nero likened to a lecherous Billy Bunter with pyromaniac tendencies, it is not hard to see just why the Roman Empire had to fall.

Although Fiddlers Three was made at Ealing Studios, it is a far more ebullient and demotic kind of comedy than what we normally associate with Ealing, one that reeks of the music hall.  With its borderline innuendo (including the Sweet Fanny Adams number, which appears more risqué today than it would have done at the time), comically debauched characters and boisterous slapstick, the film feels like a prototype Carry On film (indeed Carry On Fiddling would have been a far more appropriate title, if you’ll pardon my double entendre).   The enthusiastically performed comical musical numbers add hugely to the film’s appeal, the highpoint being of course Trinder dragged up to the nines for his hilarious Carmen Miranda routine.  It’s barking mad from top to tail, and most of the wartime references are likely to go over the heads of most viewers today.  Still, whilst it is hardly the most sophisticated of British comedies, Fiddlers Three remains a comic delight, a film that cannot fail to extract a belly laugh or two, and no end of dirty sniggers.  Here’s a history lesson you won’t forget in a hurry, courtesy of the sublime Tommy Trinder at his comedic best.   Ah, you lucky Romans...

© Derek Adamson 2011

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