Orders Is Orders (1933) User Reviews

Part of Gaumont British Failed Strategy

[malcolmgsw · 5/10 · 9 April 2014]

In the 1930s Gaumont British decided to try and crack the American market.So in many of their films they featured American actors.In this film we have James Gleason and Charlotte Greenwood.Given that Gleason is a credited writer one must assume that he beefed up his part.Greenwood,was a marvelous eccentric dancer and she uses her fabulous long legs to good effect.The problem though is that in American terms these would be no more than names from the B list of actors.The British cast is quite interesting.Donald Calthorp has a large part but he looks very old and would die only 6 years later at 52.The farce here is broad and uneven and not particularly successful.Gaumont British went broke in 1938.enough said.

About turn! Look lively with it!

[F Gwynplaine MacIntyre · 4/10 · 26 October 2004]

A glance at the cast list of 'Orders Is Orders' would indicate that this is a very funny movie. Charlotte Greenwood (one of my favourites) and veteran comic actor James Gleason are aboard. Even more intriguingly, this movie was made in England with a primarily British cast. The thought of Brooklyn-accented Gleason doing his "Toidy-Toid Street" dialogue on screen among so many proper Englishmen -- headed by Sir Cedric Hardwicke, no less -- seems to promise hilarity. So it pains me to report that this movie isn't nearly as funny as it could have been with this cast and this material.

SLIGHT SPOILERS. Gleason plays Ed Waggermeyer, a brash pushy American movie director. He shows up in England, at a Royal Army base run by a blimpish colonel played by the unfunny Cyril Maude. Waggermeyer wants to shoot a movie, using the army base as a film set and the soldiers of the regiment as extras. (I found this part very plausible, but surely Waggermeyer's business office would have arranged things in advance.) The colonel tells Waggermeyer to go play soldiers somewhere else.

This is one of the movies where the male bigshot has a female secretary who actually gets the work done, being smarter and more efficient than her boss. (I've encountered this in real life, but I've seen it in so many movies it seems a cliché.) The colonel fancies himself at billiards, so Waggermeyer's secretary Wanda (Charlotte Greenwood) challenges him to a game. The funniest scene in this movie occurs here, as long lean lanky Greenwood does some of her trademark physical comedy, draping her legs all over the billiard table to hilarious effect. When the colonel loses the match, he has to pay off by letting Waggermeyer's film crew shoot in his barracks, with the soldiers recruited as movie extras.

From here on, the humour gets too obvious. The colonel is a blowhard, so of course -- once the movie starts shooting -- he gets star-struck and fancies himself an actor, demanding a speaking role in the movie. Of course, he's incompetent and keeps blowing takes. And of course, at the worst possible moment, the brigadier general shows up. This gentleman is played by Cedric Hardwicke, and I have to give Sir Cedric some credit. Comedy is always more effective if one character is an authority figure who projects genuine menace: a good example of this is Chaplin's 'The Great Dictator', with Henry Daniell playing his role in deadly earnest as the ruthlessly efficient Nazi officer. In 'Orders Is Orders', Hardwicke plays his role straight, portraying a brigadier general who (unlike Maude's colonel) is a genuine authority figure, and who will brook no violation of military discipline. Hardwicke manages to anchor this misguided movie, but not quite well enough to save it.

The interplay between Gleason and the Britishers is too contrived to be funny. We're expected to laugh at the contrast between them, but it's too exaggerated. Gleason's character, a Brooklyn mug, persists in speaking in elaborate American slang, which the colonel (in full "jolly good, eh wot?" mode) is too thick to understand. Waggermeyer is meant to be smart enough to figure out that his slang is incomprehensible, but he carries on using it anyway. Quite a few other things in this comedy are just a bit too contrived to work. It's nice to see Ian Hunter and Ray Milland (a genuine cavalryman) in small roles; I wonder if this movie was a factor in their transfer to Hollywood. In the 1960s, I briefly worked with Finlay Currie: he recalled working in this movie, and told me that it was a very unpleasant experience. At least Charlotte Greenwood doesn't disappoint. I'll rate 'Orders Is Orders' 4 points out of 10.

Archetypal British humour at its best

[brian-joplin · 8/10 · 22 March 2014]

Based on a stage play by the great Ian Hay, 'Orders is Orders' would appear to be a standard British comedy of its period - in fact it turns out to be even more interesting. For one thing, in transferring the very basic plot (American director wishes to make a movie in a British army barracks)to the screen, director Walter Forde takes the opportunity of including extensive shots of infantrymen drilling on their parade ground. Thus the film has considerable historic interest as a social document - but even more when you look at the cast. Ray Milland, for instance, as the romantic lead, reminding us what a devastatingly handsome man he was before age and Hollywood took their toll. Or Cyril Maude as Colonel Bellows in one of his very few film roles, portraying a Blimp figure even more wittily than George Graves' Colonel Lukyn in the better-remembered 'Those were the Days' shot the following year. Or Cedric Hardwicke, two years before his knighthood, and already, it would seem, rehearsing his Count Frollo in the 1939 'Hunchback of Notre Dame'. Or Hay Plumb, in his younger days director of the 1913 version of Hamlet, and who ended his career as a bus driver in Clapham, but here playing one of a pair of bumbling privates (the other is the ubiquitous and ever-delightful Eliot Makeham)in much the same droll style as Laurel and Hardy. Which brings me to the central point of the film - its humour. The characteristics of British humour at its best (innuendo rather than obviousness, wry wit, mock solemnity) are sometimes difficult for those born elsewhere to grasp. But if ever a movie could be used as a demonstration lesson, this is it. As the confrontation between British and American values proceeds, the action becomes more and more hilarious, culminating in an inspired farcical climax. Though not the absolutely most amusing of British comedies of the thirties, 'Orders is Orders' certainly counts as one of the most watchable, and should not be missed by serious enthusiasts of the cinema. One final point: the film's taking its title from the catchphrase "orders is orders", common in Britain from Victorian times to the 1960s. When the story was remade twenty years later, the studio opted for the more grammatically correct 'Orders are Orders', thereby missing the point entirely. Both versions occur on the soundtrack of Forde's film, but it's the older idiom which provides, and pointedly so, the very last words of its spoken dialogue. What does the phrase suggest? Watch Maurice Evans delivering it in 'The Story of Gilbert and Sullivan' when his valet insists he goes to bed early, and all will become clear without further explanation.