On Approval (1944 Clive Brook and scr, prod)

We might start with Who is Clive Brook? (The actor in Frankenstein I was trying to remember is Colin Clive.) Well despite that slightly odd accent he was British. This was one of his last films, having started out on stage and in films since 1920 - von Sternberg's Underworld and Shanghai Express, The Four Feathers, Cavalcade and a 1929 incarnation  of Sherlock Holmes (The Return Of..) This was his only time as screen writer and director, adapting a play by Frederick Lonsdale. And he's done a good job of opening it out and making it breezy and cinematic. e.g. in playful opening which contrasts current fashion with Victorian culture, and in a bizarre dream sequence which is like something by Cocteau.

Brook's similarly impoverished friend Roland Culver fancies Beatrice Lillie (though it's hard to see why), whilst her 'American' friend Googie Withers (no accent at all) fancies Brook. In quite racy material for its time (it was 'Adult' rated!) the quartet end up on a Scottish castle on a remote island...

It's like a slightly below-par Lubitsch, good fun.

Photographed by Claude Friese-Greene, music by William Alwyn, editing by Fergus McDonell.