Dirty Work (1934) Review: Gordon Harker is a total mood

Is this worth watching today? Honestly, yeah, but only if you have a soft spot for absolute chaos. If you like seeing stuffy British guys lose their minds, you will have a good time. If you want a serious mystery, you will probably hate this with a passion. 💎

It is basically a fossil of a movie. But it is a funny fossil.

The whole thing takes place in a jewellery store. You have these guys who are supposed to be professional, but they are all incredibly twitchy.

I think the main reason to watch this is Gordon Harker. He plays the security guard, and his face looks like it was carved out of a very annoyed potato.

He has this way of looking at the other characters like they are insects. It made me laugh every time he walked into a frame. 🤨

The plot is about catching a thief, but that is just an excuse for the actors to run around. Ralph Lynn is the lead, and he is doing that thing where he talks really fast and drops things.

He reminds me a bit of the energy in Knowing Men, but much more frantic. Sometimes he is so loud it actually made my dog bark at the TV.

There is this one scene where they are trying to hide behind some counters. It goes on for a long time.

You can tell they are waiting for the audience to stop laughing, except there is no audience because it is a movie. The silence in between the jokes feels weirdly heavy.

I noticed that the sets look very thin. Like, if someone leaned too hard on a wall, the whole jewellery store would probably fall over and reveal a parking lot. 🏗️

It has that very specific 1930s stage-play feel. Characters enter from the left, say something loud, and exit to the right.

It is not exactly cinematic. It is more like someone put a camera in front of a very busy doorway.

Robertson Hare is also in this. He is the one who always looks like he is about to cry.

His voice goes up about three octaves whenever he gets nervous. Which is all the time.

I found myself wondering if people in 1934 actually talked like this. Probably not, but it is fun to imagine a world where everyone was this clumsy.

The way they handle the "thief" is so incompetent. If I was a criminal in this movie, I would have just walked out the front door while they were arguing about a ladder. 🪜

There is a weird bit of dialogue about a necklace that I did not quite follow. Something about the pearls being fake, or maybe the people were fake?

I got distracted by Ralph Lynn’s tie. It was very wide.

The movie gets much better once the actual "detective work" starts. By better, I mean it gets noisier.

If you have seen Lily of the Alley, this is the exact opposite of that. That one was silent and moody, while this one is basically a megaphone strapped to a script.

It is a Ben Travers story, so you know what you are getting. It is an "Aldwych Farce" which is just a fancy way of saying men losing their trousers (metaphorically, mostly).

I did find the female characters a bit boring. Lilian Bond is there, but she does not get much to do except look pretty and watch the men act like toddlers.

The lighting in the store is very flat. It makes everything look like a hospital basement sometimes.

One reaction shot of Gordon Harker lasted so long I thought the video had frozen. But no, he was just being intense.

Is it a masterpiece? No way. But it is human.

You can tell the actors were having a blast. They keep almost breaking character when they bump into each other.

I like that the movie does not try to be important. It just wants to be a mess for an hour.

It is definitely better than Rough Seas which I watched last week and found totally forgettable. At least I remember the faces in this one.

The ending is a bit of a rush. It is like they realized they only had five minutes of film left and needed to pack everyone into a room.

But the final joke landed for me. It was simple and dumb.

Sometimes dumb is exactly what you need. Especially when it involves 1930s hats. 🎩

Random Notes I Scribbled Down:

• The sound of the footsteps is really loud for some reason.
• Gordon Harker’s eyebrows deserve their own billing.
• I think I saw a boom mic for a split second near the top left? Maybe just a shadow.
• The "villain" is not scary at all. He looks like a bank manager who got lost.
• I really want one of those old-fashioned phones now. 📞
• The the pacing is very fast in the middle but slow at the start.

If you can find a good copy of this, give it a go on a rainy afternoon. It is charming in a very loud, very clumsy way.

Just do not expect any actual police work to happen. These guys couldn't find a sandwich in a bakery. 🥪