by Allan Fish
(UK 1937 84m) DVD2
Next train’s gone!
p Edward Black d Marcel Varnel w Marriott Edgar, Val Guest, J.O.C.Orton story Frank Launder ph Arthur Crabtree ed R.E.Dearing, Alfred Roome md Louis Levy art Alex Vetchinsky
Will Hay (William Porter), Graham Moffatt (Albert), Moore Marriott (Jeremiah Harbottle), Dave O’Toole (Postman), Dennis Wyndham, Frederick Piper, Sebastian Smith, Agnes Laughlan, Percy Walsh,
There never was another like Stockton’s favourite son, Will Hay. Anyone who isn’t British who may be reading this may think “Will Hay, wasn’t he that killjoy who took the sex out of the movies in the thirties.” He’s barely mentioned in US film guides, his films only available there through special order through internet sites like Movies Unlimited. Yet to the British film-viewing masses he’s part of the furniture, a comic genius in the pantheon, as essential and as relevant to his nation in as Jacques Tati in France. Like Tati’s Monsieur Hulot, Hay is a bumbler, an incompetent, but with a tendency towards the dishonest, who is put into places of responsibility, abuses that responsibility, but somehow comes up smelling of roses. In an age when so many think British comedy began with Monty Python, it’s nice to be able to remind certain folks that that’s only a later flowering of the tree. The earliest saw many other comic highpoints, from the anarchy of the Crazy Gang to the less cinematic style of Sid Field. Yet it’s Hay who worked best on film and who produced a string of minor British comedy classics, from which great things can be found in nearly all of them. Many will cite his later The Ghost of St Michael’s and My Learned Friend, the latter of which is great in itself, but somehow Hay without his original cohorts, Graham Moffatt and Moore Marriott, is like the Carry Ons without Kenneth Williams and Sid James. Though the wonderful Ask a Policeman, Convict 99 and Where’s That Fire? are all memorable, Oh Mr Porter! is his and the team’s masterpiece.
The story is strictly from formula and borrows heavily to the point of grand larceny from The Ghost Train, but who cares? Hay was born for this movie. We follow our inept eponymous stationmaster from his arrival at the wonderfully named Buggleskelly, somewhere in Northern Ireland (“got your clock?” Marriott asks him when he arrives) to his encounters with a rustic local postman (“you’re WASTING your time”) to his attempted capture of the smugglers at the windmill to the final bow of the hat to the recently deceased steam engine, Gladstone, who looks old enough to have sired Stevenson’s Rocket (and Marriott old enough to have been there). The idea of it being set in the rural Irish countryside may have been a touch close to political incorrectness at the time, and certainly some of the locals are about as Irish as Max Boyce but it works for all that. And whereas some of Hay’s earlier films relied on his fine tuned sketch routines of the incompetent schoolmaster with trademark piece-nez and mortarboard, his Porter is no less funny or pathetic. He is made to order for ridicule. He stops express trains that never stop simply as a matter of pride, generally tries to lay down his authority and falls flatter on his back every time. Moffatt and Marriott meanwhile have been there, seen it, done it, bought the T-shirt (or maybe, the toga, Moffatt’s so big and Marriott’s so old). They just get on with their own little lives and don’t let the unimportant fact of who happens to be the poor unfortunate sod currently consigned to the graveyard post of their stationmaster interfere with that. They know there will be a new one along next week. Indeed, that all time great impossibility that is Marriott’s cry of “next train’s gone!” can be seen to be actually reasonably accurate. There is no next train, no last train, no train full stop. Period. They just look after the place and stop a small gust of breeze from blowing it over. But if we wonder why we like Hay it’s because we are just like him, flying in the face of reality simply for form. We get kicked down, but we get up and try again. He’s resilient and the British people love resilient losers. They’re part of our national heritage. Like the next train, Hay is, alas, gone, but never forgotten.
How Oh Mr. Porter! made the Top 100:
Bill Riley No. 9
Bobby Jopsson No. 16
Frank Gallo No. 27
Allan Fish No. 28
Sam Juliano No. 29
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Writers/Founders
And whereas some of Hay’s earlier films relied on his fine tuned sketch routines of the incompetent schoolmaster with trademark piece-nez and mortarboard, his Porter is no less funny or pathetic. He is made to order for ridicule. He stops express trains that never stop simply as a matter of pride, generally tries to lay down his authority and falls flatter on his back every time.
This was one of the first reviews written by Allan that I read back in 2004 shortly after we first met and embarked on our classic friendship. I still think it’s one of his best pieces, and it’s in service of a British comedy that he not only introduced me to, but rightly regarded as the best film of all by the underappriciated British comic Will Hay. This often hysterical and anarchic piece features Hay as a pompous authority figure who is a model of ineptitude. The quick fire dialogue, inventive visual gags (that at least in this film rival Chaplin and Keaton) and broad slapstick (the latter not an area Hay is usually adept at) make for a towering British classic in any genre, and the immortal line “Yer wastin’ your time” is among the most memorable in screen comedy. I happen to agree with Allan too that both MY LERNED FRIEND and THE GHOST OF ST. MICHAEL’S would push closent to OH MR. PORTER! is the Hay pantheon. The film deserved to make this countdown without any shadow of a doubt.
Nice one!
Wonderful! Hay is such a consistent delight. It’s a pity he’s not more celebrated outside Britain.
Well this is clearly a gap in my own viewing. I’ve never heard of Hay nor of any of these films. Shows you what I know about British comedy. It looks like the entire film is on YouTube and that may be the easiest way to find it. I will have to catch up with this film soon. Great essay Allan and this should be a great introduction to his films I would guess.
Thanks for the reminder of how parochial most of our countdown lists inevitably are. Here’s someone in my own language who’s pretty much unknown to me, no more than a name I’ve read in books. Imagine how much movie comedy is out there beyond the ken of any of us.
So Allan turned Sam on this this, and Sam in turn passed on this gift to me. It could be argued that only the British could appreciate this best, but the comedy is universal. I think it is at least as good and any Marx brothers film. The review by Allan is masterful.
Lovely essay here. I’ve always felt that this was the English mirror image to the Marx Brothers’ ‘Duck Soup’ – it’s a film that leaves a person in a bubble of enchanted delight, the shady shenanigans of Hay’s character mirroring the mischevous delight wrought by the great get-rich-quick scheming of Phil Silvers ‘Sgt Bilko’. An utter delight.