When Preston Sturges made “The Sin of Harold Diddlebrook” in 1947 it was at the tail-end of what may be the most amazing stretch of comedies in film history. It had started with “The Great McGinty” seven years earlier, the first film he directed.
By then the Sturges recipe (because he was never, even in his weakest films, formulaic) had been firmly established: he had his cast of supporting actors, he had his characters with funny names (Wenkledank, Waggleberry) and above all he had stories that started in one place and ended on, let’s say, Jupiter.
“Harold Diddlebrook” is considered by many to be the end of this hot streak. It stars another comic genius past his prime, silent film star Harold Lloyd. Chaplin had the sentiment (not the sentimentality, lest we anger Nabokov), Keaton had the surreal intentiveness, Lloyd had films that worked like a good-oiled clockwork – like the one he was dangling from in “Safety Last”, maybe his most famous film.
After the introduction of sound his career went south. He didn’t go all Norma Desmond, but he was definitely struggling. “Harold Diddlebrook” takes scenes from “The Freshman”, one of his silent triumps, and uses it as a prologue. That’s a typical Sturgesian invention that seems fresh still today. In fact the only other time something like that’s been done is in Soderbergh’s “The Limey”. And luckily “Harold Diddlebrook” has good jokes, too. So don’t ask me why it’s underrated and not beloved. I have no idea.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDnYJuTMKeA