The Common Touch

Another of Baxter's sweet-tempered, homely fables proposing a socialist utopia of fairness and freedom from hardship. 'And why not?' says Bransby Williams straight to camera in the last shot of the film. Young company boss Hibbert, with a public school chum for company, takes up lodgings incognito at Charlie's Doss House, to learn how the other half live. The result is less The Road to Wigan Pier than The Street of a Thousand Stereotypes, with Baxter's showbiz instincts as well to the fore as his political ones. Greta Gynt's costumes for her cabaret turns provide the most startling element in the picture. Overall, as hard not to like as it is not to patronise.