Hue and Cry.

Considered to be the first of what we now describe as the Ealing comedies the post war movie Hue and Cry (1946) is more fantasy than realism although its main locations used London’s bomb sites which made great adventure playgrounds for youngsters right through to the later part of the fifties. T E B Clarke’s story involves a group of working class kids who suspect a gang of crooks of using a popular weekly serial comic book publication called The Trump to send coded messages to each other to set up various criminal activities. When the leader of the youngsters Joe Kirby reports their suspicions to the police, Inspector Ford refuses to take their claims seriously. Joe and his young friends decide to take action themselves to stop the crooks.

 

Joan Dowling with Harry Fowler.

This Boys Own Paper adventure story was directed by Charles Crichton, and stars Harry Fowler in his breakthrough role as Joe Kirby, the magnificent Alistair Sim plays the rather camp comic book author Felix H Wilkinson who it was said was based on Frank Richards creator of the Greyfriars School stories that featured Billy Bunter. Jack Warner, for one of the odd times in his career, plays a villain and the only girl member of Joe’s gang is debut actress Joan Dowling who in 1951 became Mrs Harry Fowler but in 1954, aged 26, committed suicide by gas poisoning when her film parts dried up.    

 

Jack Warner.....

....and the wonderful Alistair Sim.

Stark photography of post war London by Douglas Slocombe (Robbery 1967, The Italian Job 1969) added a gritty feel to what in essence was a thriller for children, a cross between a working class version of Richmal Crompton Just William and Emil and the Detectives (a 1931 movie adapted for the screen by Billy Wilder and Emeric Pressburger from Erich Kastner’s novel of the same name).  A light-hearted entertaining romp that takes us to a world before the word teenager was ever muted!! 

It Always Rains on Sunday

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'[1]. You can sense the similarity with the British New Wave movement of the late 50's and early sixties.

 

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.

 

Rose's life is not what dreams are made of?

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.

 

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.

The Streets of East London cir.1947.

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[1] An Introduction to Film History

Jigsaw.

Jack Warner as DI Fred Fellows.

Detective Sargent Jim Wikes (Ronald Lewis) is sent to an estate agents in Queens Road Brighton that has been broken into. The only thing that appears to be missing is the lease of some rented properties.  On checking one of the houses it’s discovered that there has been a murder of a young women and an attempt to dismember and hide her body.  Sending one of the East Sussex Constabulary’s most experienced police officers Detective Inspector Fred Fellows (Jack Warner) to investigate, who determines that they have no idea of the deceases identity only her initials and they are also unable to trace the man whose name appears on the contract. A jigsaw of clues is laid out for both the police and the more observant viewer but can they be pieced together to find out who carried out this awful crime? 

Ronald Lewis as DS Wilkes.

Made with the full cooperation of the Chief Constables and Officers of the County Borough of Brighton Police and the East Sussex Constabulary, Val Guest’s 1961 police procedural Jigsaw has not aged as well as Hell is a City, which was made two years prior to this murder mystery. The director returned to the police perception of the 1950’s, for example the insistence that the police are all good sorts who ‘endure the arrogance stupidity and apathy of the public’[1].

Again made on location in a provisional town and superbly photographed by Arthur Grant, who took over as Hammers regular cameraman in 1961.  Jack Warner was at this time the face of the popular TV series Dixon of Dock Green (1955-1978) appearing in 432 episodes as the formidable George Dixon until he was eighty years old. As you would expect Warner looks like he was born to be a no nonsense copper, but Guest gives him human sensibilities, a love of football, a wee weight problem and the difficulties he has with giving up cigarettes, and a man who finds it difficult to delegate. 

A suspect is questioned!

Guest’s screenplay, which was based on a Hilary Waugh novel Sleep Long My Love includes some great characters that could only be found in a British movie and seem to live in a vacuum of their own making. There’s the slimy salesman who uses his sales techniques to entice lonely women into bed, a colour-blind deliveryman who says he has a photographic memory but only in black and white, a fussy little teacher who is excited to be involved in a murder investigation, a life long virgin played by Yolande Donlan, and if you think you have seen the ‘glazier’ before its Gerald Campion who played the perennial schoolboy Billy Bunter in the TV series between 1952 and 1961. Its these kind of character study’s that makes this neatly plotted murder mystery so interesting.

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[1] Robert Murphy - Sixties British Cinema.