Auld Lang Syne

Filmed before Britain’s switchover to talkies, Auld Lang Syne is largely a silent film, with a few musical interludes. Legendary Scots entertainer Harry Lauder plays a kilted, sour-dispositioned gent who visits his offspring in London. Lauder is laboring under the supposition that his son Pat Aherne is a college student, and that his daughter Dodo Watts is a nurse. In truth, Aherne makes his living as a boxer, while Watts is a cabaret dancer. The plot wends its predictable way through 75 mirthsome minutes, occasionally interrupted by Dodo Watts’ dancing sequences and Harry Lauder’s “Wee Dock ‘n’ Dorrit”-style comic ballads.