Age alone works against this now obscure British comedy, which (for good reasons) was never shown in the United States until the mid-1980s. It isn't difficult see why not: wartime American audiences in the 1940s might have considered themselves too sophisticated for such brisk but old-fashioned English humor (and besides, it had no relevance to the war effort). Will Hay, a popular comedian in his homeland, plays a rather dubious lawyer who finds his name at the tail end of a cheerfully psychotic ex-con's vengeance list, leading him into a roundabout chase as he tries to pursue his own would-be murderer. Historian William K. Everson described the film as a noir-comedy (he introduced the film at the screening I attended, at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley back in 1986), but the quick pace and non-stop vaudeville chatter are more reminiscent of classic pre-war screwball comedy.
Review of My Learned Friend
