The Goose Steps Out
Directed by Will Hay and Basil Deardon. 1942
Starring Will Hay, Charles Hawtrey, Barry Morse, Frank Pettingell, Julien Mitchell, Anne Firth and Peter Ustinov. Black and white. 75 mins. Released on blu-ray for the first time as part of Studiocanal's Vintage Classic collection.
Trying to make a quid or two off of the 75th anniversary of a wartime comedy may seem like a desperate move on Studiocanal's part, but when one half of the nation premier power couple is an Arthur Askey lookalike (Big Hearted Arthur with Cold Hearted Teresa – who made that match?) it could be a timely move. As a kid, I spent a lot of mornings and afternoons sat in front of black and white comedies starring musical hall era comics. (I'm so old that when I was a kid Askey was still working, popping up on Crackerjack and the like.) I was more of a George Formby fan myself but a Will Hay film also constituted a perfectly reasonable excuse to stay indoors and avoid the fresh air of a summer holiday afternoon.
I remember them as mostly being Hay heading up a triple act alongside Moore Marriot and Graham Moffat, (he was the Father Ted to their Dougal and Jack) ineptly running some kind of station: fire, rail, police. By this time though Hay had gone solo, a language teacher who is the spitting image of a recently arrested German spy. He is sent over to Nazi Germany to take the spy's place as an instructor of a class for young Nazis studying to be undercover agents in Britain and find out about a secret weapon being developed there. It is a Germany where they all speak and understand colloquial English, except in the classroom where they are trying to learn to use and understand colloquial English expressions.
How does his comedy hold up? Well, initially not very well. It's incredibly loud, Hay seems to shout all his lines and grimace incomprehension like he was hard of hearing: Will, Eh. He has one of busiest faces of any comedian this side of Jim Carrey, in a manner that could be described as mugging. He does take a bit of getting used to but after the first fifteen minutes I found myself getting back into the swing of it.
The key to Hay is that though it all seems a little bit hysterical to begin with, there is actually a lot of variety to the humour. One moment it's farce, the next a series of puns and word play. There's a sequence where he has to escape from a secret research laboratory dressed in an asbestos suit that is beautifully shot, like a Quatermass film suffering a Carry On intrusion. Audiences in 1942 loved the moment where Hay tricks his class into giving V signs to a picture of Hitler, but these days I prefer the scene where a young Nazi, played by Peter Ustinov, gets frustrated by the illogicality of the variation of the pronunciation of “ough” in British place names. This is where the all-British cast lets it down a little: a proper German accent would make his protestation about why ist de Slough not pronounced “Sluuf” that bit funnier.
The Goose Steps Out is a lot of fun, silly in places, clever in others, and very endearing, Still funny after all these years, Will Hay, eh.
Extra.
New Interview with Will Hay biographer, Graham Rinaldi
- Go to Blazes – Will Hay short film
- BBC Radio 3 The Essay: British Film Comedians – Will Hay Audio Featurette by Simon Heffer
Directed by Will Hay and Basil Deardon. 1942
Starring Will Hay, Charles Hawtrey, Barry Morse, Frank Pettingell, Julien Mitchell, Anne Firth and Peter Ustinov. Black and white. 75 mins. Released on blu-ray for the first time as part of Studiocanal's Vintage Classic collection.
Trying to make a quid or two off of the 75th anniversary of a wartime comedy may seem like a desperate move on Studiocanal's part, but when one half of the nation premier power couple is an Arthur Askey lookalike (Big Hearted Arthur with Cold Hearted Teresa – who made that match?) it could be a timely move. As a kid, I spent a lot of mornings and afternoons sat in front of black and white comedies starring musical hall era comics. (I'm so old that when I was a kid Askey was still working, popping up on Crackerjack and the like.) I was more of a George Formby fan myself but a Will Hay film also constituted a perfectly reasonable excuse to stay indoors and avoid the fresh air of a summer holiday afternoon.
I remember them as mostly being Hay heading up a triple act alongside Moore Marriot and Graham Moffat, (he was the Father Ted to their Dougal and Jack) ineptly running some kind of station: fire, rail, police. By this time though Hay had gone solo, a language teacher who is the spitting image of a recently arrested German spy. He is sent over to Nazi Germany to take the spy's place as an instructor of a class for young Nazis studying to be undercover agents in Britain and find out about a secret weapon being developed there. It is a Germany where they all speak and understand colloquial English, except in the classroom where they are trying to learn to use and understand colloquial English expressions.
How does his comedy hold up? Well, initially not very well. It's incredibly loud, Hay seems to shout all his lines and grimace incomprehension like he was hard of hearing: Will, Eh. He has one of busiest faces of any comedian this side of Jim Carrey, in a manner that could be described as mugging. He does take a bit of getting used to but after the first fifteen minutes I found myself getting back into the swing of it.
The key to Hay is that though it all seems a little bit hysterical to begin with, there is actually a lot of variety to the humour. One moment it's farce, the next a series of puns and word play. There's a sequence where he has to escape from a secret research laboratory dressed in an asbestos suit that is beautifully shot, like a Quatermass film suffering a Carry On intrusion. Audiences in 1942 loved the moment where Hay tricks his class into giving V signs to a picture of Hitler, but these days I prefer the scene where a young Nazi, played by Peter Ustinov, gets frustrated by the illogicality of the variation of the pronunciation of “ough” in British place names. This is where the all-British cast lets it down a little: a proper German accent would make his protestation about why ist de Slough not pronounced “Sluuf” that bit funnier.
The Goose Steps Out is a lot of fun, silly in places, clever in others, and very endearing, Still funny after all these years, Will Hay, eh.
Extra.
New Interview with Will Hay biographer, Graham Rinaldi
- Go to Blazes – Will Hay short film
- BBC Radio 3 The Essay: British Film Comedians – Will Hay Audio Featurette by Simon Heffer
