Sometimes you watch a film that
surpasses all your expectations; sometimes you watch a film that reminds you
how good the British film industry can be. The film in question is Robert
Hamer's 1947 adaptation of a novel by Arthur La Bern, It Always Rains on Sunday.
This Ealing production depicts a slice of post war London's
working class life just two years after the end of WW2. It involves people
that have had life beaten out of them by a war and rationing, and
live their lives surrounded by bomb damage. It's a film that has been compared
with the 1930's French film movement known as the Poetic Realism Movement.
These are recreated realism films stylised and studio based rather than
socio-realism of the documentary. 'They
usually have a fatalistic view of life with their characters living on the
margins of society, either as unemployed members of the working class or as
criminals. After a life of disappointment, the characters get a last chance at
love, but are ultimately disappointed again and the films frequently end with
disillusionment or death'. You can sense the
similarity with the British
New Wave movement of the late 50's and early
sixties.
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| The blond barmaid falls for the flashy crook. |
The action takes place more or less on
one Sunday in East London. The central figure in the story is Rose, a housewife
who before the war worked in a local public house. It was this attractive young
blond barmaid that fell in love with a flashy crook who was a regular at the
pub, a tall handsome man called Tommy Swan. But the intense affair with Tommy
did not last; he was arrested in Manchester and got seven years in Dartmoor for
robbery with violence. Rose ended up marrying into a life of drudgery. George (Edward
Chapman) is a dull but decent man 15 years her senior with a young son and
two nubile teenage daughters Doris (Patricia Plunket The
Flesh is Weak 1957) and Vi (Susan Shaw Pool
of London 1951) who don't get on with their
stepmother. Things get worse for Rosé who gets more and more depressed and
miserable as time goes on. Then one grey and wet Sunday morning she wakes up to
the news that her ex lover Tommy Swan has escaped from Dartmoor and the police
suspect he is heading for his old East End haunts. She discovers that the
fugitive is hiding in the family's Anderson Shelter in their back yard. Rose
knows that she should turn him in, but realises there is still a spark between
them, so decides to help him escape even with the treat of two years hard
labour hanging over her should she get caught. Meanwhile the family goes about
their normal Sunday morning routines totally unaware of the swiftly developing
situation.
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| Rose's life is not what dreams are made of? |
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| The pressures of family life begin to tell. |
A bleakly desperate and serious story
that shows us a time that bares no relation to modern Britain, a totally
different world from today especially for working class women like Rose
who yearn for some excitement from their sad ‘stuck in a rut’ lifestyle’s. With
Swan appearing back in her life it takes her back to her days as that young carefree
blond barmaid and for a short time injects some excitement and danger, however
risky, back into her life on this cold dank Sunday morning in Bethnal Green.
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| For a short time romance returns for Rose. |
Hamer brings out some great character
studies of what are in essence real people; even in the smaller parts we
get fully-fledged characters. Googie Withers and John McCallum, who in 1948
married, play the two main characters. Their real life relationship added
dynamism to the on screen affair between Rosé and Tommy. Withers was a strong
and sexy actress who appeared in many films before she moved to Australia with
her husband were they both continued to have successful careers in the theatre.
The period detail is fantastic and gives us, the audience, a real sense of
community in this run down part of London, helped by the beautiful
photography of Douglas Slocombe a cinematographer whose career spans 47 years
and includes 84 feature films from early Ealing in the 1940's right up
to three Indians Jones movies in the 1980's via The
Italian Job in 1969.
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| The Streets of East London cir.1947. |
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