|
Something Always Happens, a comedy where authority figures get taken down a
peg or two while the poor get rich quick, neatly encompasses many of the recurring
themes of Depression-era cinema in 1930s Britain. In fact most of the 23 low
budget films Michael Powell directed between 1931 and 1936 focus on money and
class in some way. A third element, which obliquely combines the two, is
hypergamy, marriage to a person of a class higher than one's own, which appears
in Night of the Party (1934) and Her Last Affaire (1935), but is nicely reversed
in Something Always Happens.
The film tries to have its cake and eat it, its amiable but lackadaisical
hero (Ian Hunter), blissfully unconcerned by his lack of money or prospects,
eventually still becoming hugely rich. His seemingly imperturbable character
prefigures the one Hunter would play in Lazybones (1935), where once again he
has to prove himself by getting a steady job and making a success of it. This
foregrounds the aspirational tendencies of most moviegoers of the time, showing
that even those without money can become a success through perseverance and
ingenuity
The nexus between high and low society had already been ingeniously explored
by Powell in Rynox (1931), in which the rich Benedik and the working-class
ruffian Marsh aren't just two sides of the same coin, but actually turn out to
be the same person, part of a complicated scheme to save Benedik's ailing
company. Brock Williams' tightly structured screenplay for Something Always
Happens goes out of it way to draw parallels between rich and poor, young and
old, as dialogue and actions are repeated or developed in adjacent scenes,
constantly juxtaposing contrasting situations and characters to draw out the
links that tie them together. This is emphasised in the early scene in which the
destitute hero pretends to be rich while the fabulously wealthy girl he's just
met lets him believe she is a poor shop girl.
This slick, fast moving comedy makes good use of its location filming
(especially the market scene) and offers, despite a rather insipid leading lady,
a variety of incidental pleasures, such as casting George Zucco (shortly before
he decamped for Hollywood) as an Italian restaurant owner. Powell himself
remembered it affectionately: "We played it all out for laughs; great speed,
excellent dialogue and it was about a chap who never paid for anything".
Sergio Angelini
|
1. Playing solo (3:00)
