The undergraduate Evelyn Waugh would no more have wanted to write a good film than he would have wanted to earn a good degree. His priority at Oxford was to avoid being mistaken for a worthy grammar-school striver, and to act casual and slapdash at every opportunity.
A silent home movie made by Evelyn Waugh and friends including Elsa Lanchester! Waugh himself stars as the priapic Dean of Balliol who tries to debauch the Prince of Wales in furtherance of a diabolical plan by the Pope, and Lanchester is the fallen woman who tries to save England.
Before he was famous, Evelyn Waugh and a few of his fellow students created this hilariously irreverent short film. Waugh had not yet become a Catholic, and is satirical at the expense of the Church, but still more merciless in his treatment of the British Establishment: the real name of "Derek Erskine", who played the King, will probably never be known, as he was a Guardsman and knew that he would be kicked out of his regiment if he was ever identified as the man mocking the monarch from behind that false beard.
A most informative review. One minor quibble: Waugh was at Hertford College, a slightly less glamorous college than Balliol.
