Let the People Sing

John Baxter was the British director probably least patronising and most sympathetic to the working classes and their culture during the '30s and '40s, and even if his films now often seem naïve and simplistic, it's good at least to see an honest and humorous attempt to deal with life outside Mayfair. Less scathing than Love on the Dole (his best known film), this adaptation of a JB Priestley novel is a spritely, vaguely Capra-esque comedy about a couple of men on the run from the law, turning up in a town where the music hall is threatened with takeover, both by museum-loving dullards and by commerce. The pair join together with the locals to fight the move, while Fred Emney steals the show as a government arbitrator susceptible to the charms of alcohol.