Champagne Charlie Details

This period romp from Ealing Studios gave the great Tommy Trinder one of his best screen roles. As music-hall star George Leybourne, he is engaged in a contest with bellicose Stanley Holloway to secure “the most popular drinking song of the era” — the era in question being the 1860s, beautifully re-created and superbly photographed by Wilkie Cooper. Director Alberto Cavalcanti obviously loves the Victorian music hall, and has a fine eye for period detail, and the film is well cast: as well as Betty Warren and Jean Kent as the leading ladies, keep your eyes peeled for very early appearances from two of Britain's loveliest actresses, Hazel Court and Kay Kendall. The songs are robustly performed, and great fun, but a little more plot wouldn't have been a bad thing.

Careful period reconstruction and good songs and acting are somehow nullified by unsympathetic handling and photography.