TROUBLE IN STORE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 789, 3 September 1954, Page 16

TROUBLE IN STORE

(Rank-Two Cities) HE criticism of comedy (as I should know well enough by now) can make a fool of any commentator. Laughter knows no laws, save that where it is involved (and I quote) one man’s Mede is another man’s Persian. But the reviewer must occasionally rush in where angels would erect No Thoroughfare notices-if candour is: one of the clauses in his contract. Spurred thus by conscience, I am bound to declare that Norman Wisdom, "the little man who is loved by millions," and "the greatest funny man in the world today," left me only perfunctorily amused. Certainly I laughed loudly enough at times during the screening of Trouble in Store. To see a professional funny man caught in a swing door, or with his trousers on fire, or festooned with duckweed, is to get a nudge on the spiritual funnybone. But laughter of that kind is a pretty primitive kind of reflex. It lacks warmth, it lacks kindness-and laughing at a person is never such good fun as laughing with him. These are, of course, the veriest clichés of criticismbut they are true, and they do apply in great measure to Norman Wisdom’s current comic style. There was, however, something which disturbed me more, and which fixed him firmly (for the time being, at least) in a much lower category than other "little man" comics I have known and loved: he’s so confoundly sorry for himself. When he sang "I’m a.Fool’"’ or "I Need You, Need You, Need You," he was lachrymose to the point of embarrassment. Not, I must hasten to explain, because he made me feel lachrymose, too. Chaplin has given me glimpses of a divine despair, Danny Kaye is not all laughter, and I have tender as well as hilarious recollections of old Stan Laurel. But none of these ever pleaded with me for sympathy; they had more honest methods of extracting it, and they had an inner integrity as funny men which gave them a dignity of sorts even in the most farcical situations.

Chaplin was, of course, the best exemplar. He was more often than not caught in the Fell Clutch of Circumstance, but he didn’t wince or cry aloud-he just kept wriggling, and we cheered him on. Norman Wisdom (at least in the role of the humblest and most bumble-footed employee of Burridge’s great department store) wriggles only just so long, then hangs limp. That he escapes is not his doing at all. Circumstance (apparently) just drops him and dusts her fingers. But he is not a person to be written off at a first viewing. Among _ the moister patches of slapstick there were glimpses of genuine fun, and indications ‘of an as yet inadequately developed gift. If he can overcome a tendency to bray like a jackass, and stop trying to. be a Donald Peers in motley, he might become a true tomic yet. Compare him with Margaret Rutherford, who also frequents Burridge’s store, and perhaps you'll understand what I’ve been driving at.