The Cinema
THIS is a very English film loosely fitted to a Continental pattern. It is about a Ruritanian Princess who for some rather vague reason is to marry the elderly and impoverished ruler of a neighbouring country. King Charles (George Grossmith) has the idea of taking out a large insurance policy, payable if the Princess fails to keep her contract. Unfortunately, when she is about to leave for the wedding, a revolution breaks out in her own capital, and for protection against the rebels she goes through a formal marriage with the naval officer sent by King Charles to fetch her.
Of course, the marriage is strictly formal, and the naval officer is a perfect gentleman-but in a Continental picture the liability of the insurance company under these new conditions would certainly have been fully exploited. Or if Lubitsch had directed such a story at Hollywood, it would have become a highly sophisticated production, full of polished innuendo and delicate satire on the frailties of royal human nature. But in the present version the Princess has to be so charming and so innocent that not much positive character is left to her, and poor Miss Evelyn Laye, with her pretty dresses, her toy monkey and her sentimental songs, is overshadowed by Miss Yvonne Arnaud, whose performance as the King's mistress-her position threatened by the proposed marriage-is the most agreeable part of the picture.
Mr. Grossmith, thoroughly accustomed to playing screen monarchs, is neatly amusing in his usual testy style, but most of the comedy opportunities go to Mr. Max Miller, who as a crazy insurance agent rattles off his special brand of inconsequent patter with such effect that he gradually comes to dominate the whole action. The early sequences, smoothly and swiftly handled, contain the germs of a number of promising situations, but gradually the dramatic interest fades away and the style veers towards that of the music-hall interlude - another characteristically English transition. Again, the attempted satire on dictators would be more effective if it were not implied that the right answer to social discontent is loyalty to a lovely Princess. However, the film does not ask to be taken at all seriously ; and Miss Arnaud and Mr. Miller almost make us forget at moments that Latin irony and broad English humour will not easily fit into a single story.
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