Old Mother Riley in Paris (1938)

Arthur Lucan and Kitty McShane had a very successful music hall act, and in the late thirties they turned to film making. Lucan played Old Mother Riley, a truculent and eccentric crone, with (we are to believe) a heart of gold. The plot of the films was pretty thin, merely designed to give Lucan an opportunity to do some more "business" as Old Mother Riley. The style looks appalling and embarrassing nowadays, but Lucan was popular at the time, perhaps due to the limited alternative entertainments.

Kitty is walking out with Joe (Jerry Verno), but Joe has to go to the Paris office of his company for a few months. When Old Mother Riley gets £300 in an insurance payout, she decides to take Kitty to Paris to see Joe. Joe is being taken in by a Mata Hari character, and she is accidentally unmasked by Mother Riley. The only interesting sequence is an "apache" dance, which was very popular in France; a man dressed as a rough seaman and a girl playing his girlfriend dance a routine in which the seaman appears to treat her violently, but of course it is all in the dance and it is done without really hurting her. In the film this is performed in a club, and Mother Riley doesn't realise it is an act and she intervenes.

It's an awful film.

The film was also released as Old Mother Riley Catches a Quisling.

HF September 2006

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