John Guillermin (1951)
The interest here consists of extraneous or incidental details – chiefly what became of some of those involved in making this black-and-white British film. Adapted by Alec Coppel from his own stage play, Smart Alec, though presumably set in the early 1950s, takes place inside and just outside a 1930s (Art Deco) block of flats in London. An early overhead shot shows a large man sunbathing on a small balcony of an upper-storey flat; when the director, John Guillermin, eventually made it big in Hollywood, he would be a specialist in spectacular skyscraper movies (The Towering Inferno (1974), King Kong (1976)). It’s nice recognising a few cast names in the opening credits – like Leslie Dwyer, memorable as the hard-drinking, children-loathing Punch and Judy man in the hit TV sitcom Hi-di-Hi! decades later. The main character in Guillermin’s film really is an Alec, as well as a too-clever-by-half sort. Alec Albion means to kill his rich uncle and inherit his fortune. Alec’s cunning plan involves putting music on a record player, to distract attention and drown out the sound of the murder being committed. The music is the ‘Colonel Bogey March’ – striking to hear this as a key soundtrack contributor well before David Lean’s The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957).
The other, agreeable music in the film comes in the opening and closing sequences, from an organ-grinder (with a monkey) outside the flats. Otherwise, Smart Alec is a hard slog, even though it’s barely of feature length (58 minutes) – you can only hope it was more fun to make than it is to watch. A major problem is Alec (Peter Reynolds), who seems meant to be charming cad as much as homicidal villain. Whereas Leslie Dwyer is enjoyable as Gossage, the porter in the block of flats, Peter Reynolds (I didn’t know the name or the face) is tiresome from the word go. What’s more, you soon realise that it will be Dwyer’s heightened but essentially truthful playing, rather than Reynolds’ coarse acting, that’s anomalous in Smart Alec: Charles Hawtrey, Edward Lexy and Kynaston Reeves are among those in the supporting cast to follow Reynolds’ lead. To be fair to them, though, frenetic broad comedy is increasingly the order of the day – its insistency upstages the central howdunnit of Smart Alec. Even when all is explained, and Alec Albion finally thwarted and brought to justice, it remains a mystery why he had to marry his secretary (Mercy Haystead), to rope her in as an unwitting assistant to his dastardly deed.
27 August 2026
