This was the first film in which Hay collaborated with director Varnel, as well as other key members of his future cinema team, Guest and Edgar as writers, and among technicians Crabtree and Vetchinsky. Varnel imbued the film with "a style now rich, full-blooded, confident".[3]
The comedy involves "savage mocking of our public school system" as well making fun of the British sense of honour and "playing the game".[3] The scenario is developed from Hay's music hall turn 'The Fourth Form at St Michael's' into a "fast, hard-hitting and visual screenplay.[3] Although the audience should dislike Twist because of his behaviour, he gains the sympathy by "his determination to survive in a hostile, efficient world... in his perpetual rearguard action against the forces of authority.[3]
The film marked the first appearance of both Peter Gawthorne and Charles Hawtrey in a Will Hay film, both of whom would go onto act as straight men to Hay in his future films.
Plot
Will Hay plays the roguish headmaster, Dr Twist, of a dubious boarding school for boys. Twist bets on the horses with his pupils and teaches them little. Colonel Willoughby-Gore attempts to sack the incompetent Twist but is foiled when he and his boys, after fraudulently gaining resounding success in a French examination, are invited to Paris by the French ministry of education.
In Paris they become involved with a gang of criminals, including escaped convict Arty Jones, father of one of the boys, and Yvette, a night club singer, who are attempting to steal the Mona Lisa from the Louvre and replace it with a duplicate.
Will Hay Jnr, Basil Mcgrail, Clive Dunn as schoolboys (uncredited)
Critical reception
Allmovie wrote, "the magnificent Will Hay re-creates his vaudeville characterization of a supercilious schoolmaster...But the inimitable, toothless Moore Marriott (aka "Harbottle") is conspicuous by his absence."[4] Screenonline observes that, directing his first Hay film, Varnel, who often supplemented the formal script with improvisation associated with stage routines, created a memorable set-piece with "Hay's class of schoolboys running amok in a Paris nightclub".[5]
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