A minor music hall star uses a professor's time machine to travel back to the Elizabethan era.A minor music hall star uses a professor's time machine to travel back to the Elizabethan era.A minor music hall star uses a professor's time machine to travel back to the Elizabethan era.
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Stéphane Grappelli
- A Troubadour
- (as Stephane Grappelly)
Arthur Hambling
- Captain Of The Guard
- (uncredited)
Vincent Holman
- Burleigh
- (uncredited)
- Director
- Writers
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThis is probably the second (available) film that involves a time machine, the first being the little-known Hungarian film Szíriusz (1942). It was released the same year as While Nero Fiddled (1944), another small British comedy about time travel.
- GoofsWhen the time ball first goes into space we see a clear view of the altimeter, labeled 'Height in ten thousand miles' and numbered from 1 to 10. Under the number 10 is written '1 million' (which the professor quotes) instead of the correct 100,000 miles (10x10,000).
- ConnectionsReferences Things to Come (1936)
- SoundtracksI'm on a Cloud That's Silver Lined
Written by Noel Gay and Ralph T. Butler (uncredited)
Sung by Evelyn Dall
Featured review
I've always enjoyed this Tommy Handley outing, in the year of grace 1943 he was at the height of his ITMA popularity. It remains a rather bizarre film to have been made during WW2, but of course would have served a purpose as a morale booster as well as being simply simple fun.
In modern Manhattan Tommy sponsors Professor Felix Aylmer's Time Ball, a huge silver ball/ space-time -ship, and eventually they, Evelyn Dall and George Moon end up in Elizabethan England - to absolutely everyone's consternation. They have some hilarious escapades, heavy with deliberate anachronisms, but it's Tommy's film - without his incessant witticisms it would have been a pretty poor show. Sometimes it falls flat, other times it's pure genius at work - at a tense life or death fraught moment he suddenly worries about having left the rice pudding "on". The scene where the four of them escape from prison from under Really Raleigh's nose - and how! - is breathtaking stuff for 1943.
To most people it's probably dated badly, but to me the salvageable bits are a treasure, and the hokey bits bearable.
In modern Manhattan Tommy sponsors Professor Felix Aylmer's Time Ball, a huge silver ball/ space-time -ship, and eventually they, Evelyn Dall and George Moon end up in Elizabethan England - to absolutely everyone's consternation. They have some hilarious escapades, heavy with deliberate anachronisms, but it's Tommy's film - without his incessant witticisms it would have been a pretty poor show. Sometimes it falls flat, other times it's pure genius at work - at a tense life or death fraught moment he suddenly worries about having left the rice pudding "on". The scene where the four of them escape from prison from under Really Raleigh's nose - and how! - is breathtaking stuff for 1943.
To most people it's probably dated badly, but to me the salvageable bits are a treasure, and the hokey bits bearable.
- Spondonman
- Sep 27, 2005
- Permalink
Details
- Runtime1 hour 28 minutes
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 1.37 : 1
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