Me and Marlborough

A costume comedy which, despite the efforts of urbanely professional Saville, looks more like an English pantomime than the breakthrough to Hollywood it was intended as. Wooden old Tom Walls hasn't much to do as Marlborough, and his hangdog ragbag of an army is no match for ebullient Principal Boy Courtneidge. Strutting, pouting, singing, brawling, her woman soldier Kit Ross reduces the ruffianly riff-raff around her to a pack of sulky schoolboys. If the anti-patriotic populism of music hall songs like 'I'm Colonel Coldfeet Of The Coldstream Guards' is missing, there's still a slimy villain of a recruiting sergeant, and the film's cynicism about martial valour and the glories of war is refreshing.