Diggers
Clip 1: The three malingerers
2 min 59 sec
Taken from the feature Diggers (1931)
Original title classification G – this clip chosen to be G
Availability of the complete title
Curator’s clip description
After they’re both slightly wounded on the Western front, best mates Chic (Pat Hanna) and Joe (George Moon) are reunited in a convalescent ward in a London hospital. They invent ways to prolong their stay, but Fatty (Edmund Warrington), an English soldier in the bed next to Chic, steals his excuse – paralysis of the left side. When a new officer (Norman French) attempts to weed out the malingerers, Chic and Joe take great delight in testing Fatty’s paralysis, with merciless kicks in the pants.
Curator’s notes
The film is full of fun at the expense of English soldiers, both officers and enlisted ranks. A similar kind of humour turns up in Peter Weir’s film Gallipoli in the Cairo scenes, made 50 years later. The comic style is very gleeful, especially the way that Chic and Joe decide to put their boots on, to make the kicks worse. They have reason – Joe has discovered his English sweetheart has been two-timing him with Fatty, drawing Joe’s pay and spending it on her lover.
Paul Byrnes, curator
have teachers’ notes.
