The reference above to Sir Stafford Cripps in the opening foreword passes for satire in so light a confection but also reminds you why there was a need for this sort of escapist fantasy seventy years ago, with 'Mr. Austerity' in No.
Having watched Godard the same day and finding a masterpiece I was obliged to watch this nonsense with a friend. I thought I will endure it as it has colour, but that added to the mistake of watching it at all.
Anna Neagle and Michael Wilding made 7 films together. At their best, they were paired in glossy, stylish musical comedies like MAYTIME IN MAYFAIR, which is a remake of ROBERTA.
No doubt Michael Wilding had his fans at the time (and even now) but for me he is trading on a charm doesn't in fact possess in this story. To be fair I am saying story rather than performance because the silliness really is at the story and script level, and Wilding is delivering what is required by both.
Isn't anybody going to talk about the couturiers?
SPRING IN PARK LANE had been such a success that producer-director Herbert Wilcox and star/wife Anna Neagle reassembled the cast and crew for this similarly named effort. It begins much like IRENE -- Wilcox and Neagle had made the 1940 screen version.
The plot of Roberta is an old chestnut by now...young man (comic, dancer, musician, goof ball, etc--depends on which version) finds he has inherited one half of a posh fashion salon.
Anna Neagle may have been a bit old for this sort of thing by 1949, but it is certainly a fun movie, as her fashion house is inherited by the rather silly Mr Gore-Brown (Wilding) and in competition with the even sillier D'Arcy Davenport. The colours are vivid, the situations progressively dafter, and the film quietly grows on you.
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