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Champagne Charlie |
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Champagne Charlie - 1944 | 105 mins | Comedy | B&WThe Production TeamDirector: Alberto
Cavalcanti. Producer: Michael Balcon. Associate Producer: John Croydon. Production Supervisor: Hal Mason. Script: Austin Melford, Angus Macphail and John Dighton. Cinematography: Wilkie Cooper. Art Direction: Michael Relph. Make-Up Artist: Tom Shenton. Editing: Charles Hasse. Music: Ernest Irving. |
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The CastTommy Trinder - George Leybourne/"Champage Charlie" Stanley Holloway - The Great Vance Betty Warren - Bessie Bellwood Jean Kent - Dolly Bellwood Robert Wyndham - Duckworth Leslie Clarke - Fred Sanders Harry Fowler - 'Orace Guy Middleton - Patron James Robertson - Justice Patron Frederick Piper - Leoroyd |
Plot SynopsisAlberto Cavalcanti, fascinated by the possibilities of
Victorian England, directed Champagne Charlie, which was set in the music
halls of the 1860s. Tommy Trinder played George Leybourne, a popular performer
of the day, and Stanley Holloway his rival, the Great Vance. Each tries
to outdo the other with drinking songs and the feud culminates in an absurd
duel. But the very existence of the halls is under threat from the theatre
owners who try to have them shut down as disorderly houses. The rivals
unite and succeed in satisfying the inspectors that there is nothing wrong
with the robust music-hall tradition, which becomes established as part
of the folk culture of the time.
Cavalcanti's film, laying on the smoke-laden, beer-swilling atmosphere
with relish, managed to capture the boisterousness of a less restrained
age, as well as giving both Tommy Trinder and Stanley Holloway a chance
to deliver several songs, some of them contemporary, such as the title
number which was a Victorian favourite, others specially written for
the film by Lord Berners and Tibby Clarke. While the Leybourne - Vance
feud had its basis in fact, the film was not entirely accurate in its
portrayal of the mid-Victorian halls, which were really large ale houses
- it was only later in the nineteenth century that the variety theatres
emerged, with greater respectability. Yet in the film the daughter (Jean
Kent) of a proprietress (Betty Warren) ends up engaged to a scion of
the nobility. Experts who had studied Victorian music hall felt that
the Ealing version was far too jolly and genteel, missing the Dickensian
poverty and sordidness of the period. Had it not been so, however, the
film would have been a lot less entertaining. |
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