LOOK UP AND LAUGH

GB
1935
1hr 20mins
Dir: Basil Dean
Starring: Gracie Fields and Douglas Wakefield

Market stallholders defy a takeover from a major chain store

There is an interesting sequence towards the end of this very funny comedy film where Gracie Fields is aloft over the town in a Cierva C.30A autogyro. At one point, she and Huntley Wright fly over a railway yard and then along a railway line, and narrowly miss a branch train hauled by a tank engine running bunker first. This of course did not actually take place, and the sequence uses a combination of studio filming and back-projection cut into actual footage of the autogyro. None the less, despite looking obviously dated and cheap by today’s standards, it is still an amusing and quite clever sequence. The location of the railway sites is not recorded. The footage of the autogyro meanwhile is rare in itself.

Although badly blurred and only briefly seen, the railway yard with wagons is still clearly visible as it curves around the right of this shot. Is that a steam locomotive present to the left of the white wagons? Or just a trick of the eye?
The branch train seen forming part of the back-projection. Although the identity of the tank locomotive remains unknown, the first coach is definitely a vintage clerestory.