The Amazing Quest of Ernest Bliss (1936) - film review

The life of the idle playboy millionaire does not agree with Ernest Bliss.  Worried about his deteriorating health, he is persuaded to see a Harley Street consultant who advises him to give up his extravagant life style for one year and try to get by on less than five pounds a week.  Ernest rises to the challenge and wagers £50,000 that he can give up his old life for one full year.  But sticking to this resolution proves harder than the millionaire layabout had imagined.   After several weeks of unemployment, unable to pay the rent on his attic room in a cheap area of London, he finally finds work as a door-to-door salesman.  When he lands his employer a huge wholesale order, Ernest rejects the offer of promotion and instead gets himself a lowly job as a chauffeur for a hire car company.  Just as he looks set to win his bet, Ernest realises he may have to lose it if he is to rescue the woman he loves from a disastrous marriage...

Cary Grant was early in his career when he starred in The Amazing Quest of Ernest Bliss, one of the few films he made in England, and yet his smooth debonair persona is pretty well defined even at this stage.  He is probably the best thing about this film, which is lacking both on the writing and directing fronts, and is let down further by Grant’s lacklustre co-star, Frances Clayton.  Today, the film’s value lies in its fairly authentic depiction of life in Britain in the 1930s, a time when genuine economic hardship was experienced by all but a super-rich minority.  There are one or two moments of poignancy but the contrived episodic plot, pedestrian direction and an awful comedy fight scene serve to diminish the film’s charms and rob it of any enduring appeal.

© Alex Sullivan 2010

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