John Baxter (1943)

The BFI’s biographical note and Jo Botting’s introduction made John Baxter sound like an interesting film-maker:  it was all downhill from there.  Botting explained that she’d decided to use as a curtain-raiser to this latest ‘Projecting the Archive’ screening a couple of sequences from Theatre Royal that didn’t make the final cut.  They were unfunny but, since they were also rejects, it seemed premature to abandon all hope.  The first twenty minutes or so of the film were more of the same.  Baxter’s comedy is about how the staff of a theatre try to prevent its closure.  The stars of the show are Flanagan and Allen.  Bud Flanagan is very aware, of himself and the camera.  Chesney Allen, the straight man in their double act, is more tolerable.  But nearly everyone in the supporting cast follows Flanagan’s lead – doing an overemphatic turn that’s almost instantly tiresome.  Sally and I walked out long before the end, feeling a bit disillusioned:  I think we’ve both always assumed that anything with a backstage setting is a guarantee of watchability, at least.   Theatre Royal was another example of a ‘Projecting the Archive’ choice that may be interesting for cinema historians but NBG as entertainment.  It – or the persistent chuckling in NFT3 – was further evidence too that, for some people, this kind of stuff has a built-in nostalgia value.  Even if you weren’t actually around at the time.

23 August 2018