England,
1938
Shown in 1971
CREDITS
- dir
-
Tim Whalen
- prod
-
Erich Pommer
- scr
-
Clemence Dane
- cast
-
Charles Laughton, Vivien Leigh, Rex Harrison, Larry Adler, Tyrone Guthrie, David Burns, Helen Hayes, The Luna Boys
- source
-
Raymond Rohauer Archives
-
COMMENTS
Shown as part of a Retrospective Tribute to British Popular Cinema, 1932–1952.
OTHER
This particular rarity has been chosen because of a triple delight in seeing three of the British cinema’s most famous actors in the same film. Laughton, Leigh and Harrison celebrate here the tradition of the London street entertainer or “busker,” a profession that still exists rather sadly these days (although one did see recently, an elderly gentleman who played all the roles in Dicken’s Oliver Twist, one balmy evening in front of the Aldwych). When this film was released in America (two years later) it was retitled Sidewalks of London, and some may have caught a showing at some ungodly hour on the telly. At the time, most critics dismissed it, for Mr. Laughton was preferred by American audiences in more neurotic portrayals—his sense of comedy had been forgotten after his convincing villainies as Mr. Bligh of the Bounty and Mr. Barret of Wimpole Street. As for Vivien Leigh, she was fixed in the American film consciousness forever as the South’s own Scarlett, so it was a bit alarming then to see these two performers kicking up their heels in street song, doing a busker’s turn. Now, of course, time has blessed the film with a curious charm, and the story of Charlie and Libby, whose career as a team of sidewalk vaudevillians is broken when the latter becomes a star of the London theater is as poignantly satisfying as the languid nonsense of 42nd Street. Of course, the acting is much better here, and Rex Harrison’s breezy personality is as enjoyable as seeing harmonica-genius Larry Adler and the now-famous Tyrone Guthrie in their salad days. St. Martin’s Lane succeeds because it was made and played in a spirit of love and tribute to a race of show people, quite familiar to the British. We can enjoy it even more today, because these actors represent another generation, just as lovable, and perhaps, their spirits still dance under the vanished glow of a Bovril sign.
—Albert Johnson
FACTOID #200
Rockers, an entry at the 1978 SFIFF, was the first and only Jamaican feature film screened at the San Francisco International.
