1930 was a rough year for British talkies. They were just moving out of the silent era, so even cameraman Freddie Francis was limited in his camera movements. Even with that handicap, director Victor Saville works with a funny script and some great comedy actors. It all starts in Venice, where Heather Thatcher is secretly married to Austin Melford, whose uncle, Alfred Wellesley, wants him to marry Belle Chrystall, daughter of his old school chum, Leslie Henson. Henson wife, however, has contracted with Toni Edgar-Bruce, former barmaid and now aristocratic marriage broker, to marry poor aristocrat Kim Peacock. Add in a few subplots like Melford and Miss Thatcher pulling a badger game on Henson for cash to get them out of Venice, and you have a tangled comic mess.It's all tied together with some bright lines and some beautiful comic timing. Henson is particularly good. He does a telephone routine as good as anything Bob Newhart ever did. It's a three-set stage show opened up a bit for the movie theater, but it works exceedingly well.

Pickles reminds me very strongly of Gyles Brandreth. The witticisms are quite British which means an American might not catch them all but there are plenty of others coming along after the one you didn't understand. And there is the physical comedy such as the oyster eating, accurate if you are struggling to get the stupid thing to go all the way down. Or the utterly mad sword fight. Or the proposal that went all wrong. Not to forget the scrum for no particular reason at the beginning. (You couldn't call that scene static but I knocked off a star because the motivation wasn't there unless you believe people of certain nationalities fight over nothing so no explanation is necessary.) The details are great, too, such as the sailor suit that has the same insignia on the front as on the sleeve as on the woman's bare arm, something I've never seen before. Or the clothes of the background people and the amazing hats. The astounding number of suits of armor and servants in the castle. The hilarious war time portrait. Excellent."Will you realize that the entire inhabitants of the Lido have arrived here in my castle and the map of Europe is going to be altered?" Oh, wonderful stuff. I just love it. There should be a thread just on quotes from this movie. It's fresh and modern and very, very funny, as if these people naturally spoke that way, about guests/ghosts and bags of cats.French farce the British way? Maybe. Risqué? Not really because nobody got very far with anybody. But considering that the British movie industry was turning out old-fashioned plots about rich people demanding that someone marry because of besmirched honor, this was a big leap toward what the Americans were making, and what would become the screwball comedy. Impoverished foreign counts, the nouveau riche who don't quite fit in yet, the useless old money set, the bright young things, along with clever comebacks, wacky situations, and an irreverent attitude toward marriage, were all very familiar to American audiences in that era.

I only rated this movie 3/10 because of the primitive, melodramatic, over the top acting and poor production standards.It has two main scenes, an Italian Hotel and Mr Pickles' castle in England.The actors run around in typical farcical fashion either not listening to or misunderstanding each other.The screenplay is badly structured and for a DVD billed as a comedy - unfunny to modern ears.Yes I know this film is dated 1930 and talking pictures had only come into existence since 1927.The actors are all obviously still inculcated into silent screen melodramatic acting techniques.If this is the best Leslie Henson could produce, film going audiences at the time must have been extremely easy to please.

This early Gainsborough flick is truly a lost treasure, and easily one of the most daring and risque films ever made. At least half a dozen different tales seem to be going on at once, all finally meeting in the end. The story starts in the Lido hotel where our "Pickles" remarks upon the fact that everyone in the register is called Smith. He's trying to chat up Mimi so she'll split up with her boyfriend as her boyfriend's uncle has other plans for his nephew - alas what no one knows is that he and Mimi have already been married for a few months, on the sly! The best scenes in the movie were Mimi's, if you like Anne Crawford you'll like this actress, she's a real gem.