Stock characters, stock situations, stock shtick performed at top speed, resulting in random results, except for journeys ending in lovers meeting. That's what we have here as Freddy Frinton, lone remaining manservant to broke baronet Malcolm Russell, helps his master not be swindled by crooked real estate agent Laurence Naismith and two smarmy City types who sings sentimental songs in swing time at random moments. There's also Jimmy Edwards to set off a subplot in involving a bell-ringing team; Joyce Golding, reciting "The Charge of the Light Brigade" with a stammer, stutter and Tourette's syndrome.
It's the stage humor of eighty years ago, transferred here to screen, that had become as stylized -- I'm tempted to write "ossified" -- as Noh drama or the B western. Audiences came to see Freddie Frinton playing the comic retainer, just as they came to hear Gracie Fields singing "The Biggest Aspidistra in the World", Abbott & Costello do "Who's on First," or the Rolling Stones sing "Satisfaction." I am told that to this day, you can't turn on German or Austrian TV on New Year's and watch anything but Frinton in TABLE FOR ONE. Of course, you'd like to hear them do it on stage, but the farceurs are dead. Except, of course, on film and on German TV on New Year's Day, where you can still admire the expert timing and pratfalls.
It's the stage humor of eighty years ago, transferred here to screen, that had become as stylized -- I'm tempted to write "ossified" -- as Noh drama or the B western. Audiences came to see Freddie Frinton playing the comic retainer, just as they came to hear Gracie Fields singing "The Biggest Aspidistra in the World", Abbott & Costello do "Who's on First," or the Rolling Stones sing "Satisfaction." I am told that to this day, you can't turn on German or Austrian TV on New Year's and watch anything but Frinton in TABLE FOR ONE. Of course, you'd like to hear them do it on stage, but the farceurs are dead. Except, of course, on film and on German TV on New Year's Day, where you can still admire the expert timing and pratfalls.