TILLY OF BLOOMSBURY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 123, 31 October 1941, Page 17

TILLY OF BLOOMSBURY

BEF )

‘THE story of Tilly of Bloomsbury is probably familiar to many readers from the stage play and the original screen version which anneared some seven

~ & iene se mS OY eo ae or eight years ‘ago. is is a 1 girl who bumps into a member of the

unemployed when walking home from work. After such a romantic introduction, the two quite naturally decide to get married. But complications supervene when Tilly discovers that her friend is a Scion of the Ancient House of Mainwaring, and when the Ancient House of Mainwaring itself descends in a body to interview her parents in their shabby Bloomsbury boarding house. The comedy element in the story reaches its climax when Sydney: Howard, re-playing his old role of the bailiff’s man, is inveigled by Tilly’s brother Perce into playing butler to impress the visiting Mainwarings with the vanished pomps of Bloomsbury. For the greater part of the film, however, gthe comedy rests on the Cockney antics and accent of brother Perce, excellently played by Michael Wilding, and upon the characters of the boarders in the household. Yet there is throughout a quality of pathos in the story which is hard to define. Even though Howard as the butler is supremely funny, you remember that he is really the bailiff’s man and every time he makes a faux pas, Tilly is a step further from marriage. There is, even in the minor characters, a pathetic determination to be respect- able at all costs which makes tha film something more than merely a comedy. In short, the theme is such that our little friend’s palms were itching to clap. If the hero had been a little more attractive, if every member of the cast had played his or her part as spontaneously and with as much polish as Henry Oscar (as Tilly’s father), Sydney Howard, and Michael Wilding, if the director had been able to overcome the staginess of some scenes-then he would be clapping vigorously, |