Michael Brantford Movies

Will Hay plays Benjamin Stubbins, an unsuccessful and incompetent English lawyer with a tendency to tip the bottle and an inability to pay any of the considerable debts he has managed to accumulate. His wealthy family, of course, disapproves of him and has taken custody of his daughter so that she will receive a proper upbringing. Stubbins does not improve matters by visiting his brother-in-law and accidentally getting the butler drunk when he recommends alcohol as the cure for his toothache. He gets no more respect at the office, where lazy office boy Willie ignores his instructions in favor of reading the comics. Stubbins' life changes, however, when a gang of American crooks shows up. They know that the safe to a bank is located directly underneath his office and they employ the unsuspecting solicitor to track down a family tree, thus keeping him out of the office while they stage a robbery. Later, they show up at Stubbins' brother-in-law's house during a Christmas party, planning to fleece the host and his guests. Fortunately, Stubbins also shows up, disguised as Santa, and after the usual chase, the gang is captured. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide

This gentle ethnic drama from the UK concerns Jake Cohen, a wealthy, self-made Jewish entrepreneur who began his career as a humble peddler and, over the decades, turned his business into a massive, booming department store with thousands of workers. When his sons begin employing modern technologies and business methods in the store, they alienate their father, who pines for the old days and the old ways of doing things. Jake's youngest son takes off for America, and falls in love with Irish lass Sally O'Connor (Meriel Ferbes) on his way home. They become engaged, much to the consternation of Jake and his wife, who have long assumed that the boy would marry his Jewish childhood sweetheart. Then, suddenly, Jake's wife dies of a heart attack. Devastated by the loss, and increasingly irritated by his sons' modernization of the business, Jake dresses in peddler's clothes and heads west, to walk the fields of England. However, he soon reads in the newspaper that his 3,000 employees have staged a strike in protest of the sons' decision not to give them the perks that Jake conceded to, prior to the takeover. He hops a pig-filled truck back to London, where he wrests control of the business from his sons, resorts once again to his "old business methods," and - in the final scenes of the picture -- gives his youngest express permission to marry a Gentile. The film wraps with two weddings for the boy and Sally, one in a Jewish synagogue and one in a Catholic church. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

In this musical comedy set in Budapest, a couple's fifth wedding anniversary falls apart when the wife tells her man that she is thinking about returning to the theater. Her husband gets so mad that he leaves. Later he sees her with her niece's boy friend and assumes the worst. Mayhem ensues until the young marrieds reconcile and resume their happy lives. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this British comedy, the owner of a country pub finds her wedding night ruined when a man comes up and offers her husband a shilling. He accepts it, but discovers that it is really the Queen's bounty for enlistment and that the kindly man is the local recruiting officer. The bride decides she must be with her man and ends up impersonating one to be with him. Eventually she saves him from the French. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Jew Suss was a well-worn stage drama based on an old novel by Lionel Feuchtwanger. The story involves an enterprising Jewish businessman (Conrad Veidt) who gains power and influence in the European community of Wurttemburg. He does this to help his people, who have suffered persecution under the Gentile burgomeisters. To his horror, Suss discovers that he is actually not Jewish at all. The question: Was his own suffering on behalf of the community's genuine Jews worth it, and will he continue to act in their best interest? Filmed as a protest against the rising tide of Anti-Semitism in Germany, Jew Suss (released in the U.S. as Power) was far from subtle, but its heart was in the right place. There would be a reprehensible 1940 German remake of Jew Suss, this time filmed under the aegis of Nazi propaganda minister Josef Goebbels, wherein the story was perverted into an anti-Jewish tract and Suss was portrayed as a drooling rapist! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Its title inspired by Albert Chevalier's world-famous music-hall ballad, My Old Dutch is a treacly tale of mother love. Marrying against her wealthy father's wishes, young Betty Balfour is left a widow when her husband is killed in WW I. Doing her best to raise her baby by herself, Balfour is challenged by her own father, who wishes to gain custody of the child and raise him in a "proper atmosphere." All sorts of misfortunes are heaped upon the hapless heroine before the tear-stained climax. The screenplay for My Old Dutch was put together by two "second generation" screenwriters, Leslie Arliss (son of George) and Bryan Wallace (son of Edgar). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

There were so many anti-war films in the early 1930s that a reviewer for the British Suspense complained that the genre was becoming hopelessly cliched. In "Lost Patrol" fashion, the story concentrates on a small group of British soldiers, trapped in a tiny trench along the Enemy line. Most of the story deals with the vacillating relationships among the commanding officer Captain Wilson (Jack Raine), old-campaigner sergeant McCluskey (Cyril McLaglen, brother of Victor) and shell-shocked private Reggie Pettigrew (Mickey Brantford). Adding to an already tense situation is the fact that Wilson has previously fallen in love with Pettigrew's sweetheart. Producer-director Walter Summers adapted the screenplay of Suspense from a play by Patrick MacGill. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

One of the most controversial British films of the 1920s, Dawn is the story of World War 1 nurse and martyr Edith Cavell. Making a rare film appearance, Dame Sybil Thorndike stars as Cavell, who risked her life by rescuing British POWs from the Germans. Captured by the Kaiser's minions, Cavell was sentenced to be executed, an action that sparked an international outpouring of outrage, even from neutral nations. At the time Dawn was filmed, the world was at peace and the Germans were striving mightily to suppress their previous reputation as warmongers. Thanks to legal and political intervention, the film was heavily censored, then removed from distribution altogether (the official reason for the suppression was the film's startlingly brutal depiction of warfare). In 1939, with the threat of war once more looming over Britain, producer/director remade Dawn as Nurse Edith Cavell, with Anna Neagle in the starring role and with all the original film's anti-German sentiments intact. Both Dawn and its remake were based on a play by Reginald Berkeley. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Having struck box-office gold with his adaptation of the mystical Vincent Blasco-Ibanez novel The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse, producer-director Rex Ingram adapted another Ibanez best-seller, Mare Nostrum, as a vehicle for his hauntingly beautiful actress wife Alice Terry. Set during WWI, the film casts Terry as Freya Talberg, a German secret agent. Though she seems to have ice water in her veins (there's even a hint that she prefers the company of women over men), Freya loses her heart to a Spanish sea captain, Ulysses Ferragut (Antonio Moreno). As a result, she is captured and sentenced to be executed, going to her death with a poise and dignity befitting a Joan of Arc. The firing-squad sequence is the film's piece de resistance, brilliantly photographed from the heroine's point of view by ace cinematographer John F. Seitz. Perhaps because virtually all the major characters die at the end, the film was a financial flop, even though its anti-war sentiments were perfectly attuned to the mid-1920s. For many years one of the most highly sought-after "lost" films, Mare Nostrum was restored to a reasonable approximation of its original tinted and toned glory in the late 1970s and has been shown several times over the Turner Classic Movies cable service. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide