As far as sociological history goes, nothing says more about a culture and its history than the humour that was popular at the time. Humour is one of the few tools that is both timeless and intrinsically tied to a particular point in the past, and as we see in many instances, the best way to view the domination perceptions and opinions is through exploring how people at a particular time entertained themselves. One of the great playwrights of his generation was Brandon Thomas, whose best-known work is Charley’s Aunt, a hilarious romp set at Oxford in the late 1890s, more or less around the time when it was first performed. When he premiered the play, it was a cutting-edge, contemporary satire. Yet, it continued to be produced over the years, to the point where later adaptations were considered historical comedies, despite not changing a word of the text, with the only difference being the perspective of the creative team reviving this story, and the audiences witnessing these events unfold. It is one of the most intriguing comedies produced at the time, and over the years it has been remade on both stage and screen, paying tribute to the hilarious play while adding a few modern elements along the way, which elevate and push it beyond being a mindless bundle of comedic scenes. Telling the story of a group of uptight Oxford graduates who find themselves encountering various comedic scenarios centred around the arrival of a wealthy relative, the story is quintessentially Victorian in its sensibility, giving Archie Mayo an abundance of options as he seeks out ways to explore this world in his adaptation, which remains the best-known version of Thomas’ iconic story.

Charley’s Aunt is a film with an effortlessly simple story, which is all part of its appeal. At its most fundamental level, this is a film about a group of students who care more about their social standing than they do their academics -, throughout this entire film, we don’t witness a single class or lecture, almost to the point where it seems to be painting the college experience as being less intellectual and more social. Set entirely within dormitories and parlours, the film explores the relationship between various people as they undergo a battle of the wits to earn dominance over one another. It is a very traditional 19th-century stage comedy, filled with witty wordplay, mistaken identities and the most iconic symbol of British comedic theatre: a man in a dress. Much like the majority of productions in The Importance of Being Earnest, as well as several of William Shakespeare’s comedies, gender is a central theme, and we find that a lot of the narrative (as suggested by the title) is drawn from this aspect of the plot, which is stretched thin, but yet never becomes unfunny. Charley’s Aunt had its origins on stage, and the majority of what makes it so compelling is how traditional it feels – Mayo does his best to bring it to life as a film without losing that spark of controlled chaos that would have sent audiences into hysterics when watching it on stage, and as one of the great journeyman filmmakers of his generation, and someone with a clear and cohesive vision that could work in just about any genre, he seemed like a very appropriate person to adapt the play, particularly with the strong writing by the always reliable George Seaton, who works closely with Thomas’ text to make sure the spirit was intact, but still adding a contemporary spin on what was already a very strong piece of writing.

Perhaps it is hyperbolic, but there is a real possibility that Jack Benny may have been the funniest actor in the history of American cinema. He may have had a relatively small body of film work in comparison to a lot of his peers, but none of them seemed to have as consistent a string of performances as him, since every time he appeared in front of the camera felt like a major artistic coup d’etat, especially since everything he did was seemingly counterintuitive to the overall intentions of the character, but yet still makes perfect sense. Here, despite being on the other side of middle age, Benny perfectly portrays a youthful university student, bringing the same sprightly charm to the part that an actor half his age would have struggled to capture. Benny is an absolute riot in this film – rarely have we found actors so willing to go to these lengths to get even the most paltry of laughs, and he delivers from beginning to end, proving why he was the master of comedy for so many decades, and making a case for a career re-analysis amongst contemporary audiences, who have mostly forgotten his genius outside of his astonishing work in To Be or Not to Be – and while it may not have the same depth or importance, Charley’s Aumt is just as entertaining. He is joined by a terrific cast that includes the hilarious Kay Francis (who manages to steal every scene she is in), and the hopelessly underrated Laird Cregar, who once again shows that he was one of the greatest character actors in the history of Hollywood, and whose relative obscurity is solely due to his premature passing only a few years later. As is the case with several great British comedies, Charley’s Aunt depends almost entirely on its cast, who deliver consistently across the board.

Even though it is designed as a comedy-of-errors that is built from the most absurd, hilariously off-beat scenarios, Charley’s Aunt is not a mean-spirited film, since it was written at a time when satire was almost always about lampooning societal structures rather than people, and it was rare to find them punching downward, at least in terms of subjects that didn’t warrant much ire. Both as a play written in the 1890s and a film made in the 1940s, there is a level of hesitation that modern viewers have when making their way towards this story – after all, this is a ribald dark comedy in which the majority of the humour comes from the idea of a man in a dress fooling a group of people into believing he is a real woman. There is an inherent danger in applying common political correctness to such a film, not only because we need to view art as a product of its time, but also because it is one of the least insulting or parodic examples of crossdressing in film history. There isn’t a moment where the protagonist is emasculated to the point where it causes him inner turmoil – it’s a pantomime about mistaken identities and how gullible people can be when they are seeking out ways to take advantage of a peculiar scenario. Oddly enough, not only is Charley’s Aunt surprisingly compassionate, but it’s also genuinely quite progressive. The story may revolve around a man masquerading as a woman, but it’s always shown in an elegant and wholeheartedly generous way, and the humour orbits around this character, rather than having him be the butt of every joke. Mayo worked long enough in Hollywood to know what audiences respond to, so while there are a couple of slightly questionable elements, for the most part, Charley’s Aunt manages to be quite a sophisticated affair in nearly every way.

Charley’s Aunt is an absolute delight of a film – hilarious and irreverent, managing to lampoon the social system while never being disrespectful to the people themselves, the film is fascinating and daring in a way that could be considered quite surprising to those expecting a small-scale, inconsequential comedy without any substance. There is a reason why Benny, in a long career that saw him conquer nearly every medium of entertainment, cited this as his favourite work – not only does it allow him to showcase his skills in a way that gives him the chance to let loose, but it offers something new and exciting to a genre that had been around for a long time, but was still growing with the time. The comedy never stops developing, and while it may seem like it is old hat in terms of sensibility and style, Charley’s Aunt is quite revolutionary in a small but significant way – the humour is sharp and precise, the performances are tremendous and the writing is exceptional, which are all the necessary qualities needed for a great comedy. It has grown to be quite obscure, and not many people discuss it now – but yet, there’s still something so enticing about a traditional comedy that adheres quite closely to conventions, and in the process manages to be unexpectedly subversive and unique. Delightful in terms of both the story and how it is executed, Charley’s Aunt is ripe for rediscovery, even if only as a forerunner to films like Some Like It Hot and Tootsie, which borrowed heavily from such stories, and are given the attention and admiration that a film like this deserves, even if only as an example of how these stories can make an impression even without going too far afield.