This is the first in a series of posts reveiwing films that either cover historic events or are themselves old and a part of our history.
Today: "Windbag the Sailor" a 1936 British film starring Will Hay.
As with many of Will Hay's films much of the humour comes from the fact that the man in charge, the figure of authority, is a fool.
Will Hay plays Ben Cutlet, a retired bargee on the canals. He lives in his sister's pub and pays his way by keeping the locals entertained [while they buy drinks] with wild, fantastic and completely false stories about this adventurous life on the high seas - fighting pirates in the South China Sea, being marooned on a desert island, surviving the worse storm ever seen etc etc. He is overheard - and recognised as a fraud - by the dishonest manager of a shipping line who wants to scuttle a ship for the insurance, and who needs a captain who won't notice what the mate is up to.
Captain Cutlet is thus hired and through misadventures actually goes to sea with the barman from the pub [Moore Marriott] and the pub's boy [Graham Moffatt] as stowaways. The hammock in the captain's cabin offers slapstick opportunities, while the trio's efforts at working out the ship's position bring in the sort of nonsensical wordplay that made Hay famous in Music Hall before he went into farms.
After assorted comic adventures, the villainous mate sets the trio adrift on a raft while he gets down to scuttling the ship. The raft fetches on a tropical island where the hapless trio are captured by the natives. It is here that modern audiences might balk. The natives are a curious mix of Polynesian, African and Caribbean cultural traits - and are portrayed as being utterly naive when faced with the modern world in the form of Capatian Cutlett and his radio set. Clearly the movie producer just wanted some hapless natives as a plot device and gave no thought at all to modern politically correct senisibiliites - it was 1936 after all. When the mate and crew also arrive on the island, the trio persuade the natives to throw the "bad men" into prison.
After further tomfoolery on the island and on the high seas, everyone is rescued and the trio go home as heroes. There is one last piece of slapstick on the grand scale that you can see coming a mile off - but which Captrain Cutlett can't, which I suppose is the joke.
Overall a good comedy movie. Rather slow-paced for modern tastes, as many films of this vintage are, and the modern viewer may find the island section somewhat racist. But the jokes, wordplay and slapstick kept on coming. Worth a punt if you have a spare hour and a half some time. It is on YouTube being out of copyright.
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