Film Review
When
Trouble in Store (1953)
proved to be a runaway success, making its lead performer, Norman
Wisdom, an instant national star, a follow-up was soon put together by
the same production team, with Wisdom returning as the one-man disaster
area who always manages to win through in the end. This film
provided something of a template for the next few Norman Wisdom films,
firmly establishing the actor's gump persona and making him a vehicle
via which the absurdities of the British class system could be exposed
to great comical effect. With his individual brand of anarchic
comedy, Wisdom was the natural successor to Charlie Chaplin and Will
Hay, and a necessary precursor to the more overtly anti-establishment
comedians of subsequent decades.
One Good Turn exemplifies the
best and worst of Norman Wisdom's films. It contains some of the
comic actor's most memorable slapstick set-pieces (including the one in
which Norman finds himself conducting a symphony orchestra) and one
sequence that is the stuff of comedy legend. The latter sees
Norman stumbling into a first class railway compartment, where he
unwittingly aggravates a collection of the most po-faced passengers you
can imagine with a bag of sweets, a bottle top and a jam
sandwich. What makes this scene so amusing is that Norman's
character has absolutely no awareness of his social standing and fails
to see the class barrier that separates him, a working class nonentity
in a flat cap, from his social superiors. This sublime
class-blindness may be what lay at the heart of Wisdom's popularity,
the thing that made him both a working class hero and the most popular
comic of his day. It is no coincidence that his career went into
a sharp and irreversible decline when class distinction became much
less of an issue, in the 1960s.
What mars this, and some of Wisdom's subsequent films, is the intrusion
of some unnecessary over-baked sugary sentimentality. Excessive
mawkishness is not something one finds a great deal of in British
cinema and where it does occur it inevitably turns the stomach and
causes the toes to curl in revulsion. When Norman gets all
dewy-eyed over a batch of angelic children whose adoring parents have
just been abducted and turned into cat food (or suchlike) the gut
reaction of any self-respecting Brit is not to sympathise but to reach
for the sick bucket. Mercifully, such moments of egregious
sentimentality would become less frequent as Wisdom's career
progressed. Even when such bursts of unwelcome soppiness did
occur they are easily endured, because you know that in the very next
scene Norman will be back to his old tricks, knocking down half of the
set, leaving a trail of mayhem and devastation in his wake, or just
making life Hell for some more obnoxious posh people. No one can
dislike a guy like this for long. He's a one-man socialist revolution.
© James Travers 2010
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Film Synopsis
Norman is an amiable odd job man at an orphanage, popular with the
staff and the youngsters alike. When one of the orphan boys,
Jimmy, takes a liking to an expensive model motor car in a shop window,
Norman foolishly promises to buy it for him. When he realises he
must honour his pledge, Norman has no option but to try to raise the
twelve pounds he needs to buy the car, not an easy task for a man in
his position. Norman's other preoccupation is Iris Gibson, a
teacher whom he has come to idolise, not knowing that she is already
romantically attached to another, more attractive man, Alec
Bigby. The latter's father owns the land on which the orphanage
is built and intends to sell it so that a factory can be built in its
place. When the staff at the orphanage hear of this news, they
decide it is time to go on the offensive...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.