Product: Sin Of Harold Diddlebock (UK PAL Region 0) (1947)
Rating: 5.0
You Arouse the Artist in Me.
Is how the bartender responds to Harold Diddlebock (Harold Lloyd) when told that he's about to have the first drink of his life.Harold gets talked into it by 'Wormy' a deliciously street-wise octagenerian urchin that asks him for a loan of a couple of bucks. Harold complies, despite the fact that he's just been fired from his job.The inspired bartender concurs with Wormy that Harold needs a drink to ease his troubles and---in a scene only Preston Sturges could have written---creates a "Diddlebock" in his honor.Originally entitled 'The Sin of Harold Diddlebock', the real sin is in being unable to rent it in most video stores. This has got to be one of the top comedies ever made.Lloyd came out of retirement to make this film after meeting and befriending kindred maniac, Preston Sturges.In "Mad Wednesday" Lloyd performs some of the funniest sight gags ever captured on celluloid, employing his trademark high-risk stunts. (Ever see 'Safety Last'?) Houdini would have been proud.In all his movies Lloyd played a hopelessly naive gung-ho optimist who triumphed against the world despite his childlike sweetness.But here the formula takes a twist, thanks to Sturges.Lloyd is now a middle aged failure who has been stuck in a menial job for the last twenty years, a weary, disillusioned man who is pathetically in love with his co-worker, an impossibly beautiful ingenue (There's always an impossibly beautiful ingenue in a Sturges film ). And then he gets fired. . .Neddless to say, all will end well, and he will triumph and get the girl in the end.But not before going berserk on "The Diddlebock" which transforms him from a meek innocent into a lunatic gambler and high roller with a taste for um... somewhat loud attire.Poor Harold wakes up sober two days later to find himself the owner of a circus, replete with strongmen and bearded ladies who are owed back pay and hungry lions that need to be fed.It's all silly fluff of course but the genius of Preston Sturges's writing makes us cheerfully suspend our disbelief and go along for the ride.Only Lubitsch and Billy Wilder came close to Sturges in the ability to give the audience superbly witty dialogue while maintaining a believable world of madcap lunacy where events move at breakneck speed.An great farce, starring a comic legend, written and and directed by the best.Enjoy.