Film Review
Champagne Charlie is one of
the forgotten gems of British cinema of the 1940s, an affectionate and
highly entertaining tribute to England's great music hall
tradition. Made by Ealing Studios during WWII - the closest the
company ever got to making a full-blown musical - it is one of the few
British films made at the time which had no obvious propaganda content.
The film was directed by the Brazilian-born Alberto Cavalcanti, during
his productive time at Ealing Studios in the 1940s. He had
started making films in France in the 1920s, working with Marcel
L'Herbier at one point, before making a series of documentaries for the
GPO in England in the 1930s. Cavalcanti's other Ealing features
include:
Went the Day Well?
(1942) and
Nicholas Nickleby
(1947).
The success of
Champagne Charlie
was largely down to the ebullient contributions from its lead actors,
who were two of the best-known faces in England at the time, Tommy
Trinder and Stanley Holloway. Trinder was an enormously popular
comedian in the '40s and '50s, known for his catch phrase "You lucky
people". Holloway was a highly regarded actor of stage and screen, best
remembered for his portrayal of Alfred P. Doolittle in George Cukor's
My Fair Lady (1964). Trinder
and Holloway form an amazing double act and throw literally everything
they have into this film. They relish the comedy, they relish the
songs, and we, the audience, relish their larger-than-life performances.
The film has been criticised for its historical inaccuracies. The
Victorian England it presents is a cheerful working class utopia, a long
way from the squalor and poverty we find in Dickens's novels.
Also, the music halls it shows us are closer to the familiar variety theatres
of the late 19th Century than the bawdy alehouses of the 1860s. Of course, such criticism misses entirely
the point of the film. Cavalcanti's intention was not historical
accuracy but escapism. His film was aimed at an audience who were
weary of the privations of a seemingly interminable war and who were
looking back into the past for comfort - hence the immense popularity
of films such as David Lean's
This Happy Breed, also released
in 1944.
Champagne Charlie shows us a
highly nostalgic, idealised view of England's past. At the time
the film was released, music halls - once the most popular form of mass
entertainment in Britain - were becoming a thing of the past, driven
out of business by the arrival of cinemas. Many people watching
this film in 1944 would have been familiar with the music halls and
would have delighted in being taken back down memory lane, to a
mythical happier time, before the war.
Today, that link with the past has been lost, and the film serves
another purpose: to preserve the memory of Britain's fine music hall
past. It may have one or two flaws (the plotting is
messy and the ending a tad rushed), but as a piece of escapist fun,
Champagne Charlie stands up well
when placed alongside cinema's better known film musicals. It is
a light-hearted film that brims with an intoxicating charm and
bubbly sense of optimism - and the songs are irresistibly catchy. If there is one Ealing film which deserves to be better
promoted, this is certainly it.
© James Travers 2008
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Next Alberto Cavalcanti film:
The Halfway House (1944)
Film Synopsis
In 1860, Joe Saunders and his brother Fred give up their mining jobs
and try to find work in London. Joe immediately gets a job as a
bar singer in a public house. His crowd-pleasing songs reach the
ears of a music hall manager, Bessie Bellwood, who offers him a
contract. Adopting the stage name George Leybourne, Joe is an
instant hit, but his popularity makes him the hated rival of another
performer, the Great Vance. A desperate feud ensues, in which the
two singers frantically try to out-do each other. Joe ultimately
triumphs with a new song entitled
Champagne Charlie, which becomes his
nickname. Unfortunately, his success may be
short-lived. The existence of the music halls is threatened by
the theatre owners, who are determined to have them all closed down...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.