Starring Charles Laughton, 1938’s The Beachcomber is not as smoothly directed and edited as Laughton’s Mutiny on the Bounty, but it’s an engaging effort all the same, based on a Somerset Maugham story. Laughton’s role is that of a ne’er-do-well island dweller whom a schoolteaching missionary wants to reform. He seems unreformable, though; is he? There are curiosities and contingencies. For her part, the schoolteacher, Martha, is a stern Christian who is herself converting to a degree she would not have expected. The film ends the way it does because it is a comedy—serious but exaggerated.

At first I thought Laughton’s acting was rather mannered, but soon found it subtle and droll; persuasive. Elsa Lanchester is wonderfully true as Martha. The film is the sole directorial work of producer Erich Pommer. Recommendable.