George Bernard Shaw wrote this as a one-act play that opened in November of 1913. They waited 55 years to make it into a film and would have been well advised to wait another 55 years. What a mishmash! In the inept hands of director Flemyng, this is a flat-footed farce that was a waste of
Warner Bros. money and the audience's time. O'Toole is a dim-witted captain of the Light Dragoons. He and Hawkins, the British ambassador, want to have an audience with Moreau, queen of all the Russians. Mostel is the prince, protector of the Winter Palace at St. Petersburg; the place looks like
Tobacco Road, Soviet-style. Animals run along the marble floors while Mostel is happily besotted. Mostel thinks that the queen needs a boy friend, so he contrives to get O'Toole into the royal bed. Moreau thinks that's a fine idea, but O'Toole races away with his girl friend, Scoular, who is
Hawkins' daughter. The queen is not amused and orders O'Toole arrested by her cossacks, who take him back to the palace. She wants to know all about his adventures in the United States, where he was present at various Revolutionary War skirmishes. She's built a huge model of a battle in her
bathroom and they play soldier until she wades into her tub to sink a British frigate. He's enraged by this, escapes once more, and is captured again and returned to the palace to attend a great ball. Once there, he dances with a troupe of Russian terpsichoreans, then is taken to a secret hideaway
where Moreau intends to have her way with him. Before his virtue is compromised, Scoular arrives and takes him away, but not before he preaches about the benefits of English life.
It fails on several levels. Shaw never thought this was one of his best works, but producers, clamoring to find works in the public domain by famous authors, often pounce on trifles and attempt to inflate them into full-blown films. The fact that Shaw wrote this probably helped secure the
financing. Mostel, unless held in check, always overacts, and this is a prime example of a stage actor, accustomed to having to play "big" for the people in the last row, overdoing things for the close-up camera. leave a comment
