No Limit (1935)

Director:

Monty Banks

Writers:

Thomas J. Geraghty (writer)
Walter Greenwood (writer)

Release Date:

1950 (West Germany)

Genre:

Comedy | Musical

Plot:

George Shuttleworth is convinced that he has the talent to win the Isle of Man TT races, despite what his neighbours back home in Wigan may think...

Plot Keywords:

Isle Of Man | Motorcycle Racing | Motorcycle | Tt Racing

Cast

George Formby	...	George Shuttleworth
Florence Desmond	...	Florrie Dibney
Howard Douglas	...	Turner
Beatrix Fielden-Kaye	...	Mrs. Horrocks
Peter Gawthorne	...	Mr. Higgins
Alf Goddard	...	Norton
Florence Gregson	...	Mrs. Shuttleworth
Jack Hobbs	...	Bert Tyldesley
Eve Lister	...	Rita
Edward Rigby	...	Grandfather
Evelyn Roberts	...	B.B.C. Commentator
Ernest Sefton	...	Mr. Hardacre
Arthur Young	...	Doctor
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Monty Banks

Runtime:

80 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Colour:

Black and White

Sound Mix:

Mono

Filming Locations:

Isle of Man

Company:

Associated Talking Pictures (ATP)

Movie Connections:

Featured in Forever Ealing (2002) (TV)

Soundtrack:

In A Little Wigan Garden

Love It!

The greatest movie of all time this isn't. I don't think it ever tried to be. It's a vehicle of George "oooh, mother!" Formby and his ukelele, in an era when Vaudeville was coughing up blood and there was a pool of talent going idle (assuming you consider the ukelele a talent!). It's lots of fun, and entirely predictable - underdog battles the odds, has a few scrapes, but gets the girl (and other things) in the end, baddies roundly thrashed, and all to the strains of the obligatory musical numbers that permeate the movie. I grew up on the Isle of Man and used to marshal on the TT course - there wasn't a year went by that at least one rider didn't have his machine painted in the Shuttleworth Snap checkerboard pattern, such is the legacy of this movie in the road-racing fraternity. Filmed almost entirely on location, it cuts in archive race footage (amazing to see what's changed and what hasn't) and it's sublimely ridiculous. If you're a road-racer, or know people who are, this is a must. For everyone else, it's a maybe. Bizarrely, in the scene at the beginning of the big race, there is a swastika flag flying from the grandstand. It's customary to fly the flags of all of the countries that the competitors are from, and I guess in 1936 there were German riders - still, it's a little strange to see it there, looks out of place.