# Film Recommendations - Pre-1950



## Garek (Aug 7, 2011)

Hey all. Was thinking maybe could use this thread for recommendation of old films, preferably less well known ones, or forgotten ones.

Just about to start watching Cat People.

Anyone got any recommendations? Political? Foreign? Noir?

On my list so far that I have to watch are Angels With Dirty Faces, Cat People and Salt of the Earth. I'd especially be interested in any foreign suggestions.


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## Orang Utan (Aug 7, 2011)

black narcissus
great expectations
rebecca


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## imposs1904 (Aug 7, 2011)

Sullivan's Travels


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## marty21 (Aug 7, 2011)

The Blue Lamp


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## Orang Utan (Aug 7, 2011)

bringing up baby is ace


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## marty21 (Aug 7, 2011)

Mr Smith goes to Washington.


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## Termite Man (Aug 7, 2011)

I'll take any excuse to post this http://www.archive.org/


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## Zabo (Aug 7, 2011)

Les Enfants Du Paradis (1945) Screenplay by the wonderful poet Jacques Prevert

Une Si Jolie Petite Plage (1949)

They Live By Night (1948)

Waga Koi Wa Moenu (1949)

Les Maudits (1947)

The Grapes of Wrath (1940)

Los Olvidados (1950)

Das Blaue Licht (1932)

Triumph Des Willens (1935)

Rififi (1955) - Yes I know it's post 1950 but it is brilliant.

That should keep you busy!

IMDB = bollocks. Best place for a synopsis is here: http://www.allrovi.com/movies/movie/the-children-of-paradise-v9264

 Use Opera Content Blocker to get rid of unwanted images-ads.


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## Lea (Aug 10, 2011)

Anything starring Cary Grant. I'm a big fan of his. The Philidelphia Story. My Favourite Wife. Bringing Up Baby. Suspicion. Arsenic and Old Lace. Notorious etc


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## N_igma (Aug 10, 2011)

Garek said:


> Hey all. Was thinking maybe could use this thread for recommendation of old films, preferably less well known ones, or forgotten ones.
> 
> Just about to start watching Cat People.
> 
> ...



This ticks some of those boxes:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odd_Man_Out


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## davesgcr (Aug 12, 2011)

A Run for Your Money
Wuthering Heights
How Green Was My Valley
The 39 Steps


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## krtek a houby (Aug 12, 2011)

Song At Midnight - 1930s take on Phantom of the Opera; lots of shadows and light. I watched it without subtitles years ago & was able to follow. V beautiful.


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## Pseudopsycho (Aug 12, 2011)

Get Todd Browning's Freaks and then lend it to me


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## weltweit (Aug 12, 2011)

The original - The postman always rings twice.


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## Garek (Aug 17, 2011)

Cheers all for the recomendations  Realised I should have come back onto this thread sooner. I am currently 'sourcing' 'A Matter of Life and Death', 'The Postman ALways Rings Twice' and 'Black Narcissus'.

Any more recommendations? Thinking maybe old foreign cinema? I can see this hunt for all films getting out of hand and diving down all sorts of rabbit holes


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## Captain Hurrah (Aug 18, 2011)

Zabo said:


> Waga Koi Wa Moenu (1949)



Looks interesting, will check it out.


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## Kaka Tim (Aug 18, 2011)

Casablanca
The Big Sleep
Grapes of Wrath
Brighton Rock
Whiskey Galore
Ossessione (1943 Italian version of 'the postman always rings twice')
All Quiet on the Western Front


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## albionism (Aug 18, 2011)

These two are absolutely stunning.

Sunrise http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YiTQwqRufs&feature=related
Pandora's Box http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zbCIGk6_1k&feature=related


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## albionism (Aug 18, 2011)

and also  _*The Golem: How He Came Into the World*_


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## davesgcr (Aug 18, 2011)

The Naked City

New York as it was ....


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## Garek (Aug 18, 2011)

Kaka Tim said:


> Brighton Rock



Hmmm, I did not not enjoy the book but I will give the film a go.


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## redsquirrel (Aug 18, 2011)

All the Archers films, lots of Hitchcock (of course)
Red River
Casablanca
To Have and Have Not
Murder My Sweet
The Killers
Green For Danger
The Glass Key
The Blue Dahlia
Gilda
Out Of The Past
The Lady From Shanghai
The Third Man
Frieda


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## Kaka Tim (Aug 18, 2011)

Garek said:


> Hmmm, I did not not enjoy the book but I will give the film a go.



Its great. Dark, menacing and Dickie Attenborough is utterly compelling as Pinky (Yes really - like a fucked up, young Brando gone bad ) . Brilliantly nasty ending as well.


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## chandlerp (Aug 19, 2011)

The Unsuspected

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0039941/


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## DaveCinzano (Aug 19, 2011)

Some fine suggestions so far.

How about:

_Wings_ (1927, silent about World War I pilots, with romantic subplot)
_Blackmail_ (1929, Hitchcock's first talkie, a thriller which started off as a silent)
_All Quiet On The Western Front_ (1930, fair rendering of Remarque's anti-war novel, with Americans playing Germans sympathetically)
_Zemlya_ AKA _Earth_ (1930, silent Soviet flick about landless peasants rising up and working together)
_M_ (1931, dark & expressionistic Fritz Lang thriller)
_Duck Soup_ (1933, one of the best Marx Brothers comedies)
_The Lady Vanishes_ (1938, fun spies-and-quips Hitchcock)
_His Girl Friday_ (1940, zingy newsroom screwball comedy with Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell)
_Detour_ (1945, early noir)

Plenty of these are available on the Internet Archive for free.


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## DaveCinzano (Aug 19, 2011)

redsquirrel said:


> Green For Danger



I love this little potboiler! It's got everything - rigid British class relationships slightly loosened under wartime pressures, stoicism, lots of melodrama, tension, and great moments of wit. Plus Alastair Sim as a pre-Columbo Columbo-type detective!

Another couple come to mind, both based on the same play by Arnold Ridley (Pte Godfrey in _Dad's Army_):

_Oh, Mr Porter!_ (1937, with Will Hay)
_The Ghost Train_ (1941, with Arthur Askey)


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## Paulie Tandoori (Aug 19, 2011)

We watched the recently restored version of Metropolis this week and it's absolutely brilliant, really would recommend seeing this.


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## krtek a houby (Aug 19, 2011)

Paulie Tandoori said:


> We watched the recently restored version of Metropolis this week and it's absolutely brilliant, really would recommend seeing this.


 I seriously want to see this


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## ViolentPanda (Aug 19, 2011)

"I Was A Fireman" (also released as "Fires Were Started") from 1943 - story of 24 hours in the life of a war-time fire crew in London's docklands. The director used locals and local fire-crew as some of the secondary characters, and it's quite tense and claustrophobic in places.


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## pennimania (Aug 19, 2011)

Battleship Potemkin - I saw this for the first time the other day and I thought it was wonderful.

powerful, moving and also unwittingly funny


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## DaveCinzano (Aug 19, 2011)

More:

_Northwest Passage_ (1940, rousing telling of the exploits of Rogers' Rangers during the Indian Wars, with Spencer Tracy)
_Mrs Miniver_ (1942, Greer Garson as a strong-willed woman on the Home Front during World War 2 in a stirring propaganda piece)
_Went The Day Well?_ (1942, English villagers pull together to beat off a sneak attack by German invaders)
_The Ox-Bow Incident_ (1943, black and white Western melodrama questioning mob justice)
_Shadow Of A Doubt_ (1943, Joseph Cotten as a shady uncle come to stay with neice Teresa Wright and family in one of Hitchcock's greatest films)
_Crossfire_ (1947, high-minded and complexly-plotted noir, with Edward Dmytryk directing Robert Mitchum)
_Hue And Cry_ (1947, kids in bomb-damaged post-war London come together to investigate some serious shenanigans, helped by sympathetic Alastair Sim)
_Kind Hearts And Coronets_ (1949, Ealing comedy about embittered Dennis Price trying to kill off various members of the D'Ascoyne family, all played by Alex Guinness)
_Passport To Pimlico_ (1949, an archaeological find leads a London neighbourhood to secede from austerity-struck Britain)
_White Heat_ (1949, Jimmy Cagney as a psychopathic, mother-fixated gangster)


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## Paulie Tandoori (Aug 19, 2011)

pennimania said:


> Battleship Potemkin - I saw this for the first time the other day and I thought it was wonderful.
> 
> powerful, moving and also unwittingly funny


yes, it is really very good innit.


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## Kaka Tim (Aug 19, 2011)




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## OneStrike (Aug 19, 2011)

The original Scarface, my enjoyment was enhanced from having seen the Pacino film and not realising there was an original, good fun comparing the two.


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## pennimania (Aug 20, 2011)

I also love WW2 films  particularly love ones with WAAFS knitting in the control room 

The Way to the Stars
Angels One Five (excellent control room scene)
Twelve O'Clock High -Americans over here this time - lovely brooding shots of airfield
in Which we Serve (navy this time - love this film)
Millions Like Us - propaganda all hands to the wheel in an aircraft factory

i have watched all these many times and would happily go on doing so for ever


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## Mrs Magpie (Aug 20, 2011)

BBC i-Player is showing a lot of old films. Farewell My Lovely is on there right now....and they've been doing a fair few Robert Mitchum films (he's always worth watching even if you've got the sound turned down. A very Attractively Bad Man).


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## Kaka Tim (Aug 20, 2011)

Missed a major one off of my list -

A Matter of Life and Death - 1946.


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## pennimania (Aug 20, 2011)

I keep thinking of more!

This Happy Breed
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (has that one already been done?)
Ice Cold in Alex -hope that's in the right time frame - great film anyway 
The Way Ahead


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## ViolentPanda (Aug 20, 2011)

Kaka Tim said:


> Missed a major one off of my list -
> 
> A Matter of Life and Death - 1946.



If we're doing Powell and Pressburger, then 1944's A Canterbury Tale is more than worth a mention. A beautiful film in all senses of the word.


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## DaveCinzano (Aug 20, 2011)

ViolentPanda said:


> If we're doing Powell and Pressburger, then 1944's A Canterbury Tale is more than worth a mention. A beautiful film in all senses of the word.


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## vauxhallmum (Aug 20, 2011)

Another vote for Les Enfants du Paradis, fantastic and  made in occupied Paris. But my favourite is
The Scarlett Empress, mainly for the frocks on Marlene Dietrich.


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## Garek (Aug 20, 2011)

Kaka Tim said:


> Missed a major one off of my list -
> 
> A Matter of Life and Death - 1946.



I am half hour into this and so far it is quite frankly one of the most astonishing films I have ever seen. I didn't think films of this era could be so darkly humorous, so surrealist. It's very British. And very good.

EDIT: In the last twenty minutes now, with the trial. The camera is panning across a vast crowd, nurses, WRAF, soldiers. I can't imagine how the audience must have felt watching that in 1946. How could you watch that without thinking of all those you might of known who had died?


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## Garek (Aug 20, 2011)

Oh and the beginning remains me of one my favourite poems, _An Irish Airman Foresees His Death._

_
_


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## Andrew Hertford (Aug 20, 2011)

I saw the 1927 film 'Napoleon' at the cinema after it had been restored some years ago and was knocked over by it.  I'd also recommend 'The Scarlet Empress' and 'Alexander Nevsky' (I love an epic, me.)

And of course you can't go wrong with 'Brief Encounter', 'The Third man' and 'Casablanca'.

To be honest I could sit down and watch just about any pre 1950 film and find something in it to fascinate me. Even something dead corny like one of the 'Old Mother Riley' films.
*
*


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## Garek (Aug 27, 2011)

_Black Narcissus_ is excellent. Disturbing and frustrating. Some of the film feels constrained, though I think that is simply because of the time it was made. Really good though. There is a slow collapse going on. I like that. The gradual erosion of strength. Goof film.


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## Frances Lengel (Aug 28, 2011)

I Know Where I'm Going.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Know_Where_I'm_Going!

Angel On My Shoulder.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_on_My_Shoulder_(film)


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## davesgcr (Aug 28, 2011)

La Bete Humaine


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## elbows (Aug 28, 2011)

Paulie Tandoori said:


> We watched the recently restored version of Metropolis this week and it's absolutely brilliant, really would recommend seeing this.



Yeah this, and All Quiet On The Western Front which I see got mentioned a few times already.

I'd have to add some Chaplin films too, since they seem to manage to express political thoughts better than modern stuff. Modern Times and The Great Dictator for a start.


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## JimW (Aug 28, 2011)

One early Chinese classic is The Goddess (1934), you can watch it at archive.org: http://www.archive.org/details/thegoddess

ETA: And here, not sure ow fast that is outside China: http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTA5MjU2MTYw.html


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## savoloysam (Aug 28, 2011)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0035962/


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## Captain Hurrah (Aug 29, 2011)

JimW said:


> One early Chinese classic is The Goddess (1934), you can watch it at archive.org: http://www.archive.org/details/thegoddess
> 
> ETA: And here, not sure ow fast that is outside China: http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTA5MjU2MTYw.html



Aye, Shanghai's first cinema opened only a few years after the first one in San Francisco.


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## october_lost (Aug 29, 2011)

Would recommend _Street Angel (1937)_


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## Mrs Magpie (Aug 29, 2011)

Ill Met By Moonlight on BBC i-Player at the moment.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0077h1j/Ill_Met_by_Moonlight/


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## october_lost (Aug 31, 2011)

DaveCinzano said:


> _Kind Hearts And Coronets_ (1949, Ealing comedy about embittered Dennis Price trying to kill off various members of the D'Ascoyne family, all played by Alex Guinness)



There showing this at the BFI (where I saw it) absoulte delight of a film, and a real send-off of m/c values.


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## Garek (Jan 27, 2012)

Right. I need to do some catching up. having discovered the joys of Powell and Pressburger I have seen Black Narcissus, Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, Red Shoes, Matter of Life and Death.

Also seen Kind Hearts and Coronets which I thought was very good. Tonight I have choice between One Of Our Aircraft is Missing, Lavender Hill Mob or The Ladykillers.


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## Garek (Jan 27, 2012)

DaveCinzano said:


> ng up and working together)
> 
> _M_ (1931, dark & expressionistic Fritz Lang thriller)




Creepy as hell, tense, dark.


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## contadino (Jan 27, 2012)

Rome, Open City (1945, Rossellini)
We Dive at Dawn (mid-40's, Asquith (sp?))
Battle of the Rails (I'm fairly sure it's pre-50. Not sure who made it. About French railway workers who sideline as partisans)

Could we sneak in Carve Her Name with Pride? It's probably around '54-'55-ish.


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## Kaka Tim (Jan 27, 2012)

Garek said:


> Right. I need to do some catching up. having discovered the joys of Powell and Pressburger I have seen Black Narcissus, Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, Red Shoes, Matter of Life and Death.
> 
> Also seen Kind Hearts and Coronets which I thought was very good. Tonight I have choice between One Of Our Aircraft is Missing, Lavender Hill Mob or The Ladykillers.



Both the later are very good - cant comment on the first one.

The Lavender Hill Mob has the added bonus of a then unknown Audrey Hepburn apperaing in a bit part right at the end.


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## petee (Jan 28, 2012)

all great suggestions above, nice to see Rififi mentioned up there, and The Lady from Shanghai


Garek said:


> having discovered the joys of Powell and Pressburger I have seen Black Narcissus, Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, Red Shoes, Matter of Life and Death.


add I Know Where I'm Going


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## Reno (Jan 28, 2012)

Three films from the 20s:

*Pandora's Box*






Starring the glorious Louise Brooks as an amoral femme fatale around whom men can't help but self destruct. The film is a hugely stylish product of Weimar Berlin, but what is most fascinating apart from Brooks herself, is that the film blames the men for being weak, rather than the woman's destructive sexuality. Pandora's Box also features the first overtly lesbian character in cinema, a countess in love with Brooks' Lulu, on whom no judgement is passed.

The fascinating Brooks was a true Hollywood rebel, who tired with the roles offered to her in the US, ran off to Europe to star in this masterpiece, destroying her career for choosing art over commerce. She was one of the first actors in films who essentially always played versions of herself. This gave her a naturalistic performing style, that makes her the opposite of contemporary preconceptions about histrionic silent film acting. Resolutely modern, she was one of the most charismatic and timelessly beautiful women to ever appear on the screen. She is mesmerising to watch.

*Sunrise*





F.W. Murnau brought his German expressionist style to Hollywood on a huge budget, with spectacular results. It's an intimate epic about a married rural couple on the brink of break up (or worse) after a terrible betrayal by the husband. They tentatively find their way back together due to the magic of city life. Murnau creates a mythical city built entirely in the studio, one that is every bit as impressive as the city in Lang's Metropolis. There are shots where entire cityscapes are built in forced perspective (with dwarf extras in the background), conveying the sense of dislocation our country mice couple would feel.

This shows how purely cinematic films were in the 20s, with a constantly roving camera and a wildly inventive use of special effects. With the arrival of sound films there was more emphasis on dialogue and narrative films wouldn't be as visually daring again till Orson Welles arrived (and even his films look restrained compared to this). On top of it, this is a wise and deeply moving love story and yet the star is an unnamed city, which initially seems like a dangerous and scary place, but ends up as an exciting and romantic playground for our heroes.

*People on Sunday*





Early docu-drama about how a group of young, lower-middle class friends spend a weekend in Weimar Berlin. The film used non-actors and cast them in a partly improvised story. In a break from German expressionist cinema the era is known for, its cinema verite style looks forward to Italian neorealism and the French New Wave. It still is a strikingly modern film, with jump cuts and hand held camera, that feels like going back 80 years in time and being there. The young film makers who made the film, Billy Wilder, Fred Zinneman and Edgar J. Ulmer and the Siodmak brothers, all were forced into emigration by Hitler and they all had notable careers in Hollywood.

It's a film that finds beauty in the little things of life and there is an added poignancy to this seemingly lighthearted film, knowing that soon these young people, full of hope and potential, would soon be deeply affected or ruined by the rise of Third Reich and WWII. There is a wonderful montage sequence that shows people of all ages enjoying themselves on a Sunday, without a care in the world, which now is deeply affecting when you know what was around the corner.

Try and find a version with a modern score by Elena Kats-Chernin, which adds to the film immeasurably.


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## atticus finch (Jan 29, 2012)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7_SfZC2fKk&list=PLBE66DA4C5E65DBC9&index=169&feature=plpp_video

Edge of the World (1937)
Dir by Michael Powell
A tale about the lives of people living in the Outer Hebredies


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## tim (Jan 31, 2012)

I too would  recommend Powell and Pressburger, in particular "A Cantebury Tale". I'm also a big fan of Will Hay who, I think, had a huge influence on British situation comedy from Hancock through to the present; Oh Mr Porter is one of his best.


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