The Ealing Comedies are one of the most respected and celebrated cycles of films in British cinema history but their reputation rests mainly on a handful of classics when there are several lesser-known films included under that umbrella term. I decided to watch, track and review all eighteen of them.
18. WHO DONE IT?
Before the Ealing Comedy became the Ealing Comedy, Comedy films made at Ealing were largely dominated by star vehicles, tailored to the specific skills of performers like Gracie Fields, George Formby and Will Hay. Unlike the later classics in which original scripts were subsequently paired with appropriate casts, the Ealing star Comedies were very plainly written with the personalities of their stars in mind. As an attempt to launch the film career of rising star Benny Hill, Who Done It? was a late-game return to this approach, which makes it feel awkwardly anomalous amongst its contemporaries. This silly and feeble film does not feel like what we know as an Ealing Comedy at all. An attempt was made to capture some of that magic by bringing in the Ealing Comedy’s most prolific writer T.E.B. Clarke to handle Who Done It’s screenplay, but Clarke’s approach was to spend months studying Hill’s TV and live work in order to harness his technique. In the process, Clarke removed any evidence of his own fingerprints from the completed film. This does not feel like the work of the man who gave us The Lavender Hill Mob or The Titfield Thunderbolt. From the opening scene of frantic but unfunny slapstick, Who Done It? is very clearly an attempt by Clarke to adopt a style that doesn’t play to his strengths. The title of the film feels like the incredulous response of an audience to the screenwriting credit.
I should say at this stage that I like silly Comedies and I love many of those aforementioned Ealing star vehicles. The problem isn’t the genre, the problem is how forced this particular film feels. When an acclaimed writer turns their hand to broad comedy, they are often said to be “slumming it” but, quite apart from the inherent snobbery in this statement, it just isn’t true. Comedy is the hardest genre to actually make work and it takes writers, directors and performers of incredible skill to pull it off. Even when you have all those components, there’s no guarantee they will blend. So Who Done It? has a fine director in Basil Dearden, a great writer in T.E.B. Clarke, a gifted comedian (despite his evermore smutty reputation down the decades) in Benny Hill, but none of it comes together to form anything like a coherent picture. Clarke had noticed Hill’s talent for mimicry and decided to showcase that, which results in a series of disjointed sketches forcing Hill into various disguises and personas. Amidst the appreciation of well-re-created accents and mannerisms, the material itself is painfully thin. A problem with star vehicles to this day is that directors are too often keen to just wind up their star and watch them go. It probably makes everyone laugh until their sides hurt on the set but trying to cut down 3 hours of improvisation into a satisfying narrative almost always exposes the jerry-built scaffolding around it.
The notion of Hill as a movie star seems like a bit of a stretch. Although the enduring image we now have of him is that of sped-up footage of predatory chases with scantily clad women, there were always quieter and wittier moments between these ickily iconic sketches. In fact, for all his reputation for garish misogyny, Hill seems like a quiet and unassuming man, a shyness that fails to translate to the star quality required to headline a feature. You can tell he’s trying hard to make Who Done It? work but the fact that the effort is constantly visible is part of the problem. Those with a real fondness for Hill might find something to enjoy here but, as with Frankie Howerd’s ill-placed cameo in The Ladykillers, this does not feel like the ideal arena for his particular talents. He feels as out of place as Who Done It? does amongst this list of Ealing Comedies.
17. HIS EXCELLENCY
The three directors most associated with the Ealing Comedy are Alexander Mackendrick, Charles Crichton and Robert Hamer. But while Crichton and Mackendrick have numerous films to justify this reputation, Hamer’s place in the Ealing Comedy canon rests entirely on the shoulders of Kind Hearts and Coronets. Although he directed several excellent dramas for Ealing as well as subsequent comedies for other studios (most famously School for Scoundrels), Hamer’s only other Ealing Comedy is one of the most forgotten of the whole cycle. I approached His Excellency with due caution, given that I had struggled to find anything close to a positive review of it anywhere. The best I could find was “not as bad as its reputation”, a tentative indication of a 2 star clunker. I always hope I can be the exception when a film that is widely disliked but given my preparation I wasn’t too disappointed to find that most everything I’d read about His Excellency was true. Actually, even a phrase as tepid as “widely disliked” feels like too strong a term for the reception afforded this film. It is more like a communal shoulder-shrug, which in many ways is much worse.
One thing that did surprise me about His Excellency is its negligible attempts to be funny. Were it not for a couple of larger than life supporting characters like Eric Pohlmann’s police chief or the reactionary old ladies in the tea room, it would not have been readily apparent that His Excellency was even intended to be seen as a Comedy. The premise seems promising enough in that respect: a no-nonsense Yorkshire dockworker sent to govern a British colony in the Mediterranean. However, it is played with an indifference that the charitable might take for subtlety but which appears to be more rooted in its director’s disinterest. Likewise, the film’s critical depiction of both imperialism and socialism could be taken for a modern take-no-prisoners approach but instead feels like an indecisive cop-out that muddies any point the film is trying to make. If a message of political unity was His Excellency’s intention, it comes closer to a “there are bad people on both sides” naivety.
Not every Ealing Comedy is hilarious but most of them tend to find an infectious joy in their absurd premises or driving forward momentum. His Excellency is a notable exception. The film was based on a popular stage play and Hamer returned to Ealing especially to direct the adaptation. Unfortunately, his alcoholism was at a level where some claim he would fall asleep during takes, an approach guaranteed to transfer to an audience. Whether Hamer genuinely had no interest in the material or was just affected by his condition, the film struggles along like a film without a director. Sadly, His Excellency feels like the product of a director who had temporarily extinguished his own excellence.
16. TOUCH AND GO
Touch and Go has the dubious honour of being perhaps the most forgotten Ealing Comedy of all and unfortunately it’s not hard to understand why. Although it was written by the acclaimed screenwriter William Rose, whose next script would be Ealing classic The Ladykillers, Touch and Go just never finds a way to develop its thin premise into a working storyline. The film follows the frustrations of furniture designer Jim Fletcher who, annoyed at the rigidity of his company’s conservative ethos, impulsively decides to move his family to Australia. Tensions arise when 2 days before the move, his daughter meets her perfect man and his wife begins to have serious doubts about the trip. There’s a hint of Ealing’s trademark themes of standing up to oppressive bureaucracy in the opening scene of Fletcher butting heads with his immovable boss, but given that Fletcher’s plans to emigrate are clearly doomed from the outset, the journey towards the inevitable return to the status quo feels like it has less in common with irreverent satire than it does with cosy sitcom tropes. The unfortunate implication seems to be that the bureaucrats were right all along and Fletcher should’ve just toed the line. There’s a hint of this conservatism in earlier films like The Titfield Thunderbolt, but in that case a traditional way of life is maintained through the solidarity of those who have to fight for it. Fletcher just ends up back where he started through the collapse of his own personal stand against his perceived oppressors.
To read Touch and Go as primarily a political comment is a clear misunderstanding though, given that its obvious target is the domestic concern of Father-knows-best overreactions. Fletcher’s sudden decision to uproot his family is erratic and abrupt, and his single-minded pursuit of it in the face of their obvious grievances is emotionally blinkered. When he finally relinquishes his poorly constructed plans, it is with a bon mot about marriage that is trite enough to be etched on a tea towel, and which still clings to the notion of the husband as the rightful decision maker with a distinctly 1950s stubbornness. I don’t have any issues with a 50s film accurately representing the dominant value system of its era. The problem I have with Touch and Go is more about its comparative blandness. Although it is a Comedy made at Ealing Studios during the same timeframe as its classics, anyone would be hard pushed to suggest that there are any other elements of Touch and Go, from style to quality, that qualify it for consideration as being of a piece with The Ladykillers or The Lavender Hill Mob.
15. MEET MR. LUCIFER
As a retrospectively applied term, Ealing Comedy has come to represent a certain type of film with specific themes, such as post-war deprivation and small groups vs. big institutions. These subjects recur again and again in the most famous Ealing Comedies but there are other films from the era that don’t quite fit that template. Though it is more often defined by thematic concerns, the Ealing Comedy officially includes all Comedy films released by Ealing between the years 1947 and 1958. There are many earlier Comedies released by Ealing but it is this period that has been officially designated the province of the Ealing Comedy™️.
Somewhere in the middle of the cycle, there are a couple of films that are much harder to hammer into the jigsaw that heretofore fit together so neatly. The first of these films is Meet Mr. Lucifer, a real oddity which takes the Ealing Comedy into the world of the supernatural in order to take a critical look at the rise of television. It follows a ham actor called Hollingsworth who is accidentally killed while starring in a crassly racist stage production of Robinson Crusoe (Ian Carmichael, one of the great faces of British Comedy, sadly makes his only Ealing Comedy appearance beneath layers of blackface makeup). Hollingsworth descends to Hell where he meets the Devil, a being who shares Hollingsworth’s likeness and who tasks him with assisting in making the lives of several mortals miserable through the use of a television set. There follows a series of vignettes featuring an interconnected group who pass the cursed television from household to household and find their lives affected negatively by the chattering box.
Meet Mr. Lucifer is based on a play by Arnold Ridley, who ironically found fame late in life as a TV star in the sitcom Dad’s Army. Although it’s focus on the then-topical theme of television’s impact on society might’ve played better in its day, Meet Mr. Lucifer now feels casually reactionary in the same tedious way as people complaining about youngsters on their phones. Although its criticisms appear fairly pointed, the water is muddied by the inclusion of the linking material involving the Devil, whose extra level of manipulation takes away from the focus on the TV’s own effects. Likewise, while the criticism of TV’s impact on stage productions appears to be sincere, the play that is affected in this case looks so terrible that the alternative of television can only be seen as a blessing. It’s entirely possible that I’m missing the point here. Perhaps these are examples of the moral ambiguities seeded into so many Ealing Comedies, while some might argue that depicting television as a tool of the Devil is completely unambiguous. The other problem with Meet Mr. Lucifer is harder to rationalise though, as it just isn’t very funny.
The television passes through the hands of three households belonging to affable retiree Mr. Pedelty, young married couple the Nortons and abrasive chemist Hector McPhee. It wreaks havoc on Pedelty’s privacy, the Nortons’ fidelity and McPhee’s suppressed libido. By far the most interesting of these stories is McPhee’s, as he becomes obsessed with a TV singer (the very alluring Kay Kendall) who appears to be addressing him directly with her songs and flirtatious straight-to-camera dialogues. Gordon Jackson brings an eerie edge to McPhee’s hypnotised state and his battle to privately enjoy his weekly dose of the songstress has a masturbatorial subtext which makes the constant interruptions he endures even funnier. Sadly, the other two stories are far more bland, with Pedelty’s attempts to curb the constant flow of visitors to his house feeling more stressful than funny and the Nortons’ marital problems feeling like a hackneyed, melodramatic slog. Given how easily Mr. Norton strays, I really wasn’t rooting for the couple to get back together, even when the film seemed weirdly determined to suggest he had the moral high ground.
It’s a shame that Meet Mr. Lucifer marked the final performance in an Ealing Comedy for one of their major stars, Stanley Holloway. Having been a delightful presence in several previous Ealing films, Holloway is sidelined here in the connecting material, and while the dual role of Hollingsworth and the Devil is showy, Holloway seems a little confused as to how exactly to make it work. He seems to have received little guidance from director Anthony Pelissier, whose unremarkable, flat direction fails to capitalise on the script’s eccentricities. Screenwriter Monja Danischewsky would write one more Ealing Comedy (the also anomalous The Love Lottery) as well as the non-Ealing Whisky Galore! sequel Rockets Galore!, before finding greater success with the Hollywood Heist movie Topkapi. But Meet Mr. Lucifer proves too intangible a concept for Danischewsky to make any real sense from. Perhaps it remains largely unseen because of its time capsule attitude towards the now ubiquitous phenomenon of television but it’s more likely that Meet Mr. Lucifer has fallen into obscurity because of its lack of quality. That, and the sight of Ian Carmichael as Man Friday.
14. ANOTHER SHORE
The year after the box office success of the first Ealing Comedy, Hue and Cry, its director Charles Crichton made the second film in the cycle, Another Shore. Like its predecessor, Another Shore is more of a blend of Comedy and Drama, something that is acknowledged in the opening credits in which two hands battle over writing “A Comedy” or “A Tragedy” as a descriptive subtitle. They finally compromise and write “A Tragi-Comedy”, although the whole tongue in cheek affair correctly indicates that Another Shore is more the latter than the former. This tonal ambiguity aside, Another Shore shares very little else with either its fast-paced predecessor or the smartly constructed films that followed it. Rather, Another Shore is a languid, absurdist oddity in the Ealing canon. While its box office failure and subsequent descent into obscurity are understandable, there is something vaguely fascinating about this curious experiment.
Another Shore follows the story (if such a wilfully eventless narrative can be called such a thing) of Gulliver Shields, a former customs official living in Dublin who has decided to leave his job after receiving a small pension on which he can scrape by. Intent on emigrating to Rarotonga, he decides to sit in the park every day in the hope of seeing an elderly wealthy person who needs help, who will then reward him with the money he requires. After reading about a car crash in town, Gulliver switches his daily stakeout to this accident hotspot, where his constant presence begins to draw the attention and ire of the locals. Meanwhile, a young woman named Jennifer develops a fascination with Gulliver, and a rich alcoholic gentleman repeatedly crosses paths with him.
As you can probably tell from that synopsis, the plot of Another Shore makes very little sense at all. You have to see it as a deliberately absurdist piece in order to accept the bizarre get-rich-slow scheme at its centre, but even having made that concession, the film is bereft of any suspense because Gulliver’s layabout approach does not generate any sympathy for his plight. His longing for a distant land is completely undersold by both Walter Meade’s screenplay and Robert Beatty’s placid performance. The attraction Moira Lister’s Jennifer feels towards Gulliver is a mystery, although there is some indication that his detachment is appealing to her because she is not used to men ignoring her. Either way, this central romance is another thing the film struggles to make work, with Beatty’s low-key acting and Lister’s ditzy energy failing to combine into anything resembling real chemistry.
Another Shore does have its attractions. Meade’s screenplay, though struggling to make sense of the story of the Kenneth Reddin novel from which it is adapted, has a whimsical verbosity that is drily amusing in places, particularly when in the mouth of Stanley Holloway. Holloway is the first of the regulars to appear in an Ealing Comedy, and though his subsequent films were mostly much more successful, he helps lift Another Shore with his numerous welcome appearances as the rich, sozzled eccentric Alastair McNeil. While they fail to generate much electricity between them, Beatty and Lister are quite entertaining in their separate roles, he an amusingly louche dropout and she a bundle of impish passion. But perhaps the greatest star of all is Dublin itself. As he had with the bombed-out London of Hue and Cry, Crichton makes the most of his location in a way that makes the viewer wonder why Gulliver would be so desperate to leave such a beautiful city.
At only 77 minutes, Another Shore is the shortest of the Ealing Comedies, yet its deliberately plodding style makes it seem longer than its fast-paced, fun-packed contemporaries. The first of three Celtic-based Ealing Comedies, it has more in common with the lumpen blarney of John Ford’s Irish comedies than it does with the lively Whiskey Galore! With his rejection of society’s expectations and his self-imposed outsider status, Gulliver just about fits amongst the Ealing gallery of heroes and anti-heroes, but the world of Another Shore is a much slower one than that seen in The Lavender Hill Mob or The Ladykillers. If only that attractively deliberate pace had been paired with a more compelling story, Crichton’s Dublin might’ve been a lovely place to revisit. As it is, I don’t think I’ll be landing on this particular shore again in future.
13. THE MAGGIE
Back when I was a young boy, there was a short-lived TV show called The Tales of Para Handy. Based on the character of a Scottish steamboat captain created by Neil Munro, it was very much aimed at lovers of gentle Sunday night Gaelic whimsy like its subsequent 90s contemporaries Ballykissangel and Hamish Macbeth. I was not aware that the Para Handy stories were also the source for Ealing Comedy The ‘Maggie’ but when I discovered that link it suddenly made sense why I’d never quite enjoyed The ‘Maggie’ as much as most of the other Ealing Comedies. Now don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against Sunday night sentimentality. I watched as many episodes of Heartbeat as any other schoolboy trying to stave off the reality of the weekend’s imminent end. But generally speaking, I don’t look for sentimentality in Ealing Comedies. These films have charm, they have heart, they even have a sprinkling of that aforementioned, best-used-sparingly ingredient, whimsy. But very few of them tip over into indulgent sentiment. The ‘Maggie’, however, features at its centre a reimagining of Para Handy named MacTaggart, who seems to have two settings: roguish and maudlin. When he fails to convince on his own terms, the film deploys a young boy to do the job for him, which is about as manipulative a technique as can be imagined. The problem is that MacTaggart is a very hard man to feel sorry for, while Calvin B. Marshall, the wealthy industrialist whose cargo mistakenly ends up on MacTaggart’s clapped-out old puffer, is portrayed as a misguided but decent man whose continued misfortune is not that entertaining to watch. MacTaggart goes out of his way to hold Marshall’s cargo to ransom in order to obtain the money to prevent his beloved steamboat, the titular ‘Maggie’, from being taken from him. But when the tables are turned and MacTaggart’s crestfallen expression fails to move Marshall, it’s time to unleash the boy and his ill-founded hero worship to cough up the half-chewed moral. Imagine a version of Whisky Galore! where the islanders are caught red-handed and get away with their crimes by all making puppy dog eyes.
I’m conscious that I’m sounding like a bit of a cruel man. Far be it from me to let my overly prescriptive demands become a significant critical factor here. And after all, if there was ever a time when it ought to be easy to instinctively root for a struggling puffer captain and against a millionaire businessman, it’s the current political climate. Unfortunately, William Rose’s screenplay doesn’t make enough of a memorable character out of either of them for me to really care that much. I hate to be the idiot pleading for less subtlety but I couldn’t help thinking that if only Marshall had been given a few more undesirable characteristics, his battle with MacTaggart could’ve taken on the same satisfying edge as the undoing of the officious Waggett in Whisky Galore! or the fall of the D’Ascoyne family’s crueller members in Kind Hearts and Coronets. We get hints of this in the amusingly unforgiving treatment of Pusey, the English employee of the American Marshall, whose one small error sets the whole fiasco in motion. For this mistake and the crime of being a stuffy British bumbler, he is subjected to a series of humiliations which eventually leave him sitting forlornly in a prison cell. It’s Ealing at its wicked best. Marshall, meanwhile, is forced to question his own worldview when he attends the hundredth birthday of an islander and strikes up a quiet conversation with a nineteen year old girl. Her speech to him is so pointedly moralising that it feels like a precursor to Rose’s later Oscar-winning screenplay for Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, a popular film which was instantaneously rejected as simplistic and old-fashioned by the 60s counterculture youth.
Here’s the thing. For all its obvious flaws, I still enjoy Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, and to an extent I quite like The ‘Maggie’ too. It most definitely fits the Ealing Comedy template of small against big, not just in the struggle between MacTaggart and Marshall but in the contrast between the evermore obsolescent puffers and the larger cargo ships that are usurping them. The ‘Maggie’ is often embraced as a return to form for the Ealing Comedy after a slight mid-cycle dip but it falls below the standard of the greats for me, despite the return of Alexander Mackendrick in the director’s chair and the Ealing Comedy debut of writer William Rose. This pair would be reteamed a few films down the line for The Ladykillers, considered by many to be the last great Ealing Comedy. For the most part, their first collaboration feels like an only partially successful experiment in bringing a bit of earnest humanity to the Ealing Comedy formula. It was a worthy attempt but the result feels less than satisfying.
12. THE LOVE LOTTERY
Producer Michael Balcon called The Love Lottery one of the worst films Ealing ever made. Its director, Ealing stalwart Charles Crichton, said he quite liked it despite its commercial failure. Although on my first viewing I was taken aback by how different it was from the other Ealing Comedies I’d seen, on this revisit I agreed with Crichton’s assessment. Though far from the best Ealing Comedy and perhaps a little too wayward in its construction, The Love Lottery emerges as a charming and inventive Rom-Com. While most Ealing Comedies focus on a small group of ordinary people taking on a large institution, The Love Lottery flips the script by making its protagonist the institution, in this case Hollywood heartthrob Rex Allerton, and the ordinary people the antagonists in the shape of his swarms of aggressive female fans. When Rex casually makes a joke about being raffled off as the prize in a studio promotion, the idea is picked up by a shady, manipulative statistician who contrives to trap Rex into agreeing to make the competition a reality. Of course, the woman who is hired to help with the ruse ends up falling in love with Rex for real, but there is the small obstacle of thousands of ticket holders to deal with before happily ever afters can be achieved.
Although The Love Lottery’s plot is often lambasted as ridiculous, I thought it served as a nice basis for an exploration of the downsides of stardom. David Niven is suitably droll as the frazzled Rex, and Harry Kurnitz and Monja Danischewsky have written him some witty dialogue and nice little comedic bits, most notably a scene in which he asks for a cigarette even though he is already smoking one. In terms of the rest of the cast, it’s perhaps fair to say that Niven is the whole show here. While Peggy Cummins and Anne Vernon are charming enough as the women in his life, they are largely sidelined, while Herbert Lom’s villain is a tad one-note and Gordon Jackson’s frustrated suitor comes across as unintentionally unlikeable, which rather scuppers the impact of his eventual romantic victory. Still, Niven is entertaining enough by himself and The Love Lottery is more concerned with satirical asides and elaborate dream sequences than it is with character. That latter gimmick is something viewers are likely to either love or hate, but I thought the dreams worked wonderfully, whether they were the extended romantic dance fantasies of Cummins’ young hopeful or Rex’s own nightmare visions. The one that opens the film, in which Rex is literally torn apart by adoring fans, is particularly memorable and deliciously macabre.
On the rare occasions when The Love Lottery is spoken about at all, it is usually in relation to a surprising cameo (and I’m not talking about the very unChinese Sebastian Cabot’s unfortunate role as a Chinese character). Most every source you might consult on the film ruins the surprise so I’ll stop short of giving away the full details but suffice it to say the climactic gag features one of the last people you’d ever expect to find in an Ealing Comedy and the sheer incongruity alone makes it stand out as the best gag in the film. For some it constitutes the only highlight but for me it was an enjoyable capper to a charming film. Amongst the company of the Ealing Comedy classics, The Love Lottery feels a big outclassed but taken on its own merits it’s actually a sweetly amusing confection.
11. THE MAGNET
Following his first foray into Ealing Comedy with the underrated A Run for Your Money, Charles Frend immediately directed his second with the rarely screened oddity The Magnet. The Magnet was written by T.E.B. Clarke who, since writing early Ealing Comedies Hue and Cry and Passport to Pimlico, had scored another hit with the police procedural Drama The Blue Lamp. Clarke’s return to the Comedy fold also saw him revisit the child’s eye view of Hue and Cry, but unlike that fast-paced boy’s own adventure, The Magnet is a film that lacks focus and doesn’t quite seem sure at what audience it is aimed. For the most part it follows the story of a young boy named Johnny who cons a younger boy into swapping his powerful magnet for an “invisible watch.” When his conscience gets the better of him, Johnny tries to ditch the magnet but can’t seem to get rid of it. When he finally gives it away to an eccentric inventor working on an iron lung, he inadvertently becomes a local hero as the inventor begins telling an embellished story about an angelic child who gave up his cherished possession to help the local hospital. As a search begins for this legendary cherub, Johnny comes to believe he is being pursued for the crime of stealing the magnet.
Despite its numerous narrative bumps, I really enjoyed The Magnet. While some critics complained of the unlikely coincidences that drive the plot, it is these wilfully daft occurrences from which the farcical comedy springs. Short on big laughs, The Magnet instead aims for a sustained shaggy dog appeal, the repeated silliness of the misunderstandings balanced by the amusement of the adventures they generate. It is when The Magnet loses that momentum the it becomes less enjoyable. In an extended mid-film sequence in which Johnny goes into hiding in his bedroom, the story begins to focus on his psychiatrist father and a dated, skeptical attitude towards psychiatry in general that probably played better during the era when psychiatry was still in its infancy. Once Johnny leaves his home to go on the run again the film picks up, heading towards a dramatic climax which pulls together several threads and paves the way for a satisfyingly moral conclusion.
In the face of the gleeful amorality of some of Ealing’s better Comedies, The Magnet feels like a curious entry into the cycle. Still, it is an appealing and well-directed tale. In particular, the scenes where Johnny first encounters the magnet and is framed in the distance by the titular object are terrific. A young James Fox does reasonably well as Johnny but towards the end of the film when he meets a group of boys with authentic Liverpool accents, one can’t help but feel the film would’ve had more charm if Johnny himself had been played by a Scouse lad instead of the plummy protagonist we actually got. Nevertheless, for those with a penchant for old-fashioned boy’s yarns, The Magnet is a delightful experience, its 78 minute runtime proving ideal for its short-story-like charm.
10. WHISKEY GALORE!
Alexander Mackendrick is now considered one of the great Ealing directors, having helmed four of its most popular comedies. But when he was tasked with making Whisky Galore!, Mackendrick was a novice, a far cry from the director who would make one of the great American films, Sweet Smell of Success, just eight years later. Squeezed out of the studio by the other films being produced at the time, Mackendrick was packed off to the island of Barra with a unit of 80 staff, many of them also comparatively inexperienced. Beset by heavy rain, strong gales and script problems, the filming of Whisky Galore! was not the happiest of experiences and when he brought in the finished product five weeks late and £20,000 over budget, Mackendrick felt that it was a poor and amateurish film. Producer Michael Balcon agreed but fortunately the public did not and Mackendrick’s relegation to second unit work was rescinded when Whisky Galore! became a hit in both the UK and US. This international success helped break the Ealing Comedy in America and Whisky Galore! remains one on the studios most beloved films as a result.
For my part, I’ve never considered Whisky Galore! to be absolutely top tier Ealing. It is a very fine film but its whimsical view of Scottish islanders can feel a tad tiresome and patronising. One has to embrace the film as a sort of Celtic fairy tale exaggeration, although the decision to cast Joan Greenwood as a Scot is distracting in this regard, with her wavering accent constantly battling against her trademark husky-voiced sensuality. Greenwood is top billed despite her part being quite small, while the other headliner is another English actor, Basil Radford. Radford’s excellent performance as a rigid, bumbling martinet is a standout and, with its own exaggerations of national character, makes clearer the good-naturedness of the deliberately fictionalised depiction of Scottish culture. The story itself was based on a real life incident in which a cargo ship carrying 22,000 cases of whisky ran aground off the north coast of Eriskay and was subsequent looted of a third of its contents before it sank. Compton Mackenzie, a home guard commander on the island at the time, used the incident as the basis for his novel, which he then helped Angus MacPhail adapt into a screenplay.
Forced through numerous rewrites by Mackendrick, Mackenzie was also unhappy with the finished work, specifically its removal of the Protestant and Catholic divide in the novel in favour of focusing on one united group taking on the authorities, a distinctly Ealing approach to the material. In this respect, the film shares several elements with Passport to Pimlico, which was produced simultaneously. While I think Pimlico is the better film, Whisky Galore! arguably has several sequences that stand out more. The nighttime liberation of the whisky by boat is atmospheric to the point of feeling almost magical, while the ingenious montage of the islanders hiding their ill-gotten booze is wonderful and the climactic action sequence of Captain Waggett and the Customs and Excise officer’s furious dash to find the missing bottles provides a riveting finale.
There’s a typically Ealing moral ambiguity to Whisky Galore!, an approach that also saw the simultaneously produced Kind Hearts and Coronets fall foul of US censors, who were not big on ambiguity at the time. While the changes made to Kind Hearts and Coronets were region specific, Hollywood’s demands that the roguish islanders of Whisky Galore! face some form of justice resulted in a terribly tacked-on ending which immediately and abruptly snatches away their hard-won victory with a finger-wagging voiceover. The treatment of Waggett, including his crushingly humiliating final fate, has a surprising cruelty about it which balances the air of light whimsy very effectively, but this balance is badly tarnished by the ending. For Whisky Galore!’s biting satire on British rigidity to have the proper impact, the islanders must emerge victorious, a finale that post-war audiences stung by the deprivations of continued rationing were surely hoping to see. When that is not the case, 80 minutes of joyful build-up are destroyed and the fun of the whole caper gives way to a mild sense of depression and bewilderment.
Despite its flaws, Whisky Galore! is another hugely enjoyable, briskly paced Comedy that packs plenty of incident into a tight 82 minutes. Its influence can be seen in several later Comedies, most notably Bill Forsyth’s wonderful Local Hero, which in turn influenced the excellent 90s TV series Northern Exposure. Pretty impressive for a film made under adverse conditions by an inexperienced director.
9.A RUN FOR YOUR MONEY
1949 is known as the greatest year for the Ealing Comedy, with most sources citing it as the year three of the studios most famous Comedies were released: Passport to Pimlico, Whisky Galore! and Kind Hearts and Coronets. There was, in fact, a fourth Ealing Comedy released that year though, A Run for Your Money. Usually brushed over quickly if it is mentioned at all, A Run for Your Money is generally considered to be a lesser Ealing Comedy, although it was nominated alongside the aforementioned three for the Best British Film BAFTA (in an incredible year for British cinema, the Ealing productions were pipped to the award by The Third Man). For my part, I love this shaggy tale of two Welsh miners adrift in London after they win a cash prize and tickets to the England vs. Wales rugby union match at Twickenham. The third in an unofficial trilogy of Celtic-themed Ealing Comedies, following the Irish-set Another Shore and Scottish-set Whisky Galore!, I consider A Run for Your Money the best of the three. Its set pieces might not be as strong as Whisky Galore’s but its headlong pace and unwieldy absurdism are more infectious.
A Run for Your Money was the first of three Ealing Comedies directed by Charles Frend, who was better known for his drama films Scott of the Antarctic and The Cruel Sea. Frend also co-wrote the screenplay, showing a flair for constructing a lively caper in which episodic incidents eventually build into a coherently madcap adventure. Although many Welsh viewers apparently bemoaned the stereotypes, A Run for Your Money at least features real Welshmen in the leading roles, sidestepping the dodgy accent problem of its predecessors. Moira Lister, previously seen in Another Shore, gets a shot at a meatier role here as a con artist, but it is in the supporting roles where A Run for Your Money most shines. Two future Oscar winners, Hugh Griffith and Alec Guinness, have smaller parts as a down-and-out musician and a harried gardening columnist respectively. It’s especially surprising to see Guinness relegated to supporting player but this was early in his career and the marvellous job he does with the role makes it into one of the film’s highlights, no doubt contributing to his casting in leading roles in future Ealing productions. Griffith’s unmistakably expressive face brings an extra dimension of ridiculousness to a storyline that contrives to have him blunder around the streets lugging a harp with him everywhere. Also worthy of note is the appearance of the glorious Joyce Grenfell in her only Ealing Comedy role, a scene-stealing bit as a snooty boutique employee.
If A Run for Your Money is lacking something it’s a focused plot. Its Ealing contemporaries from the same year could all be summarised in one line pitches but my best shot at doing the same for A Run for Your Money would be “Welshmen run amuck in London.” Still, the vagueness of that concept allows the film a freedom to go in numerous different directions and introduce many delightful characters and situations along the way. Guinness’s attempts to locate the Welshmen on behalf of his newspaper see him become the classic put-upon Ealing character, not dissimilar to Whisky Galore’s Waggett, while Lister’s Jo is an intriguing villain, her ambiguous and volatile attitude towards her oblivious mark making for an unpredictable romantic arc. Leslie Perrins is also effectively oily as her associate conman. Perhaps it is the nominal star Donald Houston as Dai who is the weakest link, his performance a trifle earnest and cloying. Meredith Edwards is more fun as his brother Twm and their inadvertent separation early in the film allows Edward to be effectively paired in a drunken double act with Griffith.
A Run for Your Money doesn’t have that recurrent thematic hook of a small group of outsiders taking on an authoritarian force that drives so many of the Ealing Comedies but its culture clash story does juxtapose small town and big city in a way that mirrors elements of that aesthetic. For the most part though A Run for Your Money is just enormous fun, taking the viewer on a tour of post-war London in a way that quickly identifies it as a fitting part of the Ealing Comedy cycle. An underrated work that is not up there with the classics but is ripe for reappraisal nonetheless.
8. BARNACLE BILL
There are two schools of thought on what constitutes the final film of the Ealing Comedy cycle. Some say it is this film, Barnacle Bill, while other sources cite Michael Relph’s Davy from the following year. In the interest of completeness, I watched Davy but in the interest of accuracy I’m not including it in this list as it is clearly a Melodrama set in the world of comedic vaudeville rather than an actual Comedy. It’s no great loss leaving Davy off the list as it is a weak film. Although it has points of interest, including a screenplay by William Rose and a rare starring role for Harry Secombe, it is a flat and clichéd backstage tale with a confused ending. It is far more fitting then to choose Barnacle Bill as the final Ealing Comedy, not only because it is clearly the right genre but also because it is a bit of a hidden gem.
Although many, including its star Alec Guinness, have disparaged Barnacle Bill as unworthy of its contemporaries, I find it to be a hugely satisfying full stop on the Ealing Comedy phenomenon. It was written by T.E.B. Clarke, the most prolific writer of Ealing Comedies and also one of the best. Clarke wrote the very first Ealing Comedy, Hue and Cry, so there’s a nice circularity there, and Barnacle Bill also tips its hat to several previous entries in the cycle. Guinness plays multiple roles, as he had in Kind Hearts and Coronets, while the story of former Naval officer William Horatio Ambrose purchasing a dilapidated Victorian pier and battling the corrupt Council in his attempts to revive it as an attraction leans heavily into Ealing’s favourite theme of a small group of outsiders taking on an oppressive bureaucracy. The twist in which Ambrose eludes the Council’s interference by having his pier officially declared a foreign naval vessel has a distinct air of Clarke’s earlier screenplay Passport to Pimlico, in which a small area of London was declared its own country. Even the rundown pier, with some of its lopsided structures, is slightly reminiscent of Mrs. Wilberforce’s house in The Ladykillers. While some claim Barnacle Bill was merely recycling elements of previous, better films, its status as the final Ealing Comedy allows this to play as an affectionate climactic culmination rather than a retread. Obviously this wasn’t the intention when the film was made but I’m more than willing to allow that happy contextual coincidence to boost Barnacle Bill’s appeal.
Although it is a wonderful little film, there are some elements of Barnacle Bill that prevent it from consideration amongst the top tier of Ealing Comedies. It is probably a good thing that the cycle ended here as there is clearly the beginnings of a changing style of humour that would likely have pushed the Ealing Comedy further and further from its recognisable form. Certainly there is a heightened silliness in places, with the opening flashbacks of Ambrose’s ancestors, all played by Guinness, trading in broad slapstick and cartoonish off-colour gags about cannibal cooking pots. When these same ancestors turn up as ghosts in the final act, watching over the latest in their line and approving of his success, it feels like a goofball gag too far, a joke that hopes its camera trickery alone will be enough to pull it through. There is also a slightly humiliating role for Junia Crawford, who plays a man-crazy young woman whose running gags involve her pouncing on nearby males, always accompanied by a sexually suggestive musical interlude in John Addison’s unsubtle score. This latter issue is a small but significant indication of the heightened levels of smuttiness that would soon take hold of British Comedies which, while sometimes enjoyable in an of-their-time way, feel thoroughly out of place in the Ealing canon.
But Barnacle Bill’s handful of flaws pale in comparison to its lively, quirky charm and rousing celebration of the little person over the corrupt system. Although it is vaguely evident that Guinness is less enthusiastic about this role than previous Ealing Comedies, he still turns in a nicely understated and believable performance as Ambrose and it is fitting that Ealing’s greatest star should appear in its final Comedy. There are some who suggest that Barnacle Bill was the equivalent of the Ealing Comedy sinking into the cruel sea but I think of it as a triumphant vessel sailing off into the sunset. In the same year, Guinness gave his Oscar winning performance in David Lean’s The Bridge on the River Kwai. He was starting to move on to bigger and more dramatic roles just as Ealing was winding down but to me Guinness will always be the star of Ealing Comedies first and foremost, and there will always be a corner of British cinema that will be forever Ealing.
7. HUE AND CRY
In 1947, a modest little children’s Adventure film called Hue and Cry was released. Retrospectively, it has come to be seen as the beginning of the charming and influential group of British films known as The Ealing Comedies. Due to its leanings towards dramatic Adventure with comic elements rather than straight Comedy, Hue and Cry is often considered a bit of an outlier amongst the Ealing Comedies, with some even deeming it a disappointment. But there are numerous elements which ensure the film is indeed the logical choice for the inaugural entry in the cycle. For one, it was written and directed by two of the stalwarts of Ealing Comedy. Charles Crichton directed more Ealing Comedies than any other director (a total of five) while T.E.B. Clarke was responsible for seven Ealing Comedy screenplays. Both Crichton and Clarke had previously worked on the wartime drama For Those in Peril and the seminal Horror anthology Dead of Night, but their collaboration on Hue and Cry birthed one of the most influential and beloved sets of films in the history of British cinema. The pair’s future Ealing Comedy collaborations would prove to be more acclaimed but Hue and Cry brings with it a sense of the thrilling historical significance of the instigator.
Another notable characteristic that clearly identifies Hue and Cry as an official Ealing Comedy is its tale of a ragtag band of schoolchildren taking on a gang of dangerous criminals. The Ealing Comedies were often characterised by tales of marginalised or underestimated groups rising up against their oppressors. Clarke’s very smart screenplay is both about and for a young audience, reflecting their experiences without ever talking down or sentimentalising. The story involves a popular kids’ comic, The Trump, being used to pass secret messages amongst the criminal underworld. When the young readership tumbles to the plot, the subsequent adventure cleverly mirrors the derring-do of their illustrated heroes. Their righteous quest takes them all over the city, allowing Crichton to present a fascinating and strangely beautiful picture of a bombed-out London, in which secret clubs are formed amongst the shells and rubble of Blitz-battered buildings. Crichton’s direction is superb, pairing the zippy energy of comic book escapism with the grim realism of everyday existence in the immediate aftermath of war. Clarke’s screenplay suggests this meshing of moods in wonderful moments such as when the young hero’s excitable musings are cut short by his mother announcing that he has a piece of sausage on his chin.
One anomalous element of Hue and Cry in relation to the other Ealing Comedies is the presence of Alastair Sim. Though often misremembered as a key player in the cycle, Sim was in fact never in another Ealing Comedy (he had appeared in a supporting role in Ealing’s earlier George Formby vehicle Keep Your Seats Please). Though a prominent figure of the era, Sim mostly appeared in films for other studios and rarely in a starring role. Though beloved of British audiences, he seemed to be an actor that few filmmakers were quite sure how to use, so while his popularity often saw him take top billing, his role in the actual film was often surprisingly minimal. This is true even of some of his more famous films such as An Inspector Calls, The Green Man and School for Scoundrels, and it is also true of Hue and Cry. Though Sim headlines the credits, he gets less than ten minutes of screentime as the unwitting writer whose stories are being manipulated by the criminal underworld. Nevertheless, Sim proves once again that a matter of minutes is all he needs to thoroughly steal a film. Hue and Cry’s cast of juveniles mostly get by on spunky energy and the good will of the audience but when Sim arrives the film gets a noticeable shot in the arm. His character moves from sinister to avuncular to childlike and vulnerable with the effortless fluidity that only an exceptionally unique performer like Sim could pull off in such a short amount of time.
Perhaps the reason why Hue and Cry is often seen as a disappointment when compared to the other Ealing Comedies is that it is not hilarious or even trying to be. Sim’s delightful cameo aside, Hue and Cry more often than not aims to be fun rather than funny. There’s an inherent humour in its pastiche of comic book adventures, right down to its closing shot of angelic choirboys in various states of disrepair after their run in with the criminal gang, which feels very much like a final panel gag in a comic strip. There’s also something so rousing about an army of kids thwarting a gang of thugs that the escalating action can easily inspire contented giggles as much as it elicits gasps of excitement. The Beano-esque spirit even spills into the opening credits, which are chalked up on various brick walls alongside pieces of jocular graffiti such as “Corny is a rotter”, a playful allusion to associate producer Henry Cornelius, reportedly a strict perfectionist taskmaster. In the film’s most risqué gag, a schoolboy in the corner of the credits is interrupted in his graffitiing by a policeman. As he makes his escape, we can see that he has written All Cops Are… and is halfway through etching a letter B.
If a boy’s-own caper isn’t exactly what audiences might be expecting from the first film in a series known for its black comedy and anarchic post-war spirit, anyone with an open mind and a penchant for a ripping yarn is bound to find something to enjoy in this lively and delightful adventure which, like its pre-teen protagonists, sadly remains somewhat underestimated.
6. PASSPORT TO PIMLICO
Though I would strongly advise against sleeping on the marvellous Hue and Cry, it’s easy to see how Passport to Pimlico is many people’s entry point to the world of Ealing Comedy. The first of four Ealing Comedies released in 1949, Passport to Pimlico brought back the cycle’s most prolific writer, T.E.B. Clarke, and paired him with first time director Henry Cornelius, the producer of Hue and Cry who was immortalised with the graffitied words “Corny is a rotter” in that film’s opening credits. Rotter he may have been but with Passport to Pimlico he immediately proved himself a fine director and, while this would be his first and last Ealing Comedy, he continued to prove himself with the delightful Genevieve several years later.
Clarke based his unique screenplay on an incident in which Ottawa Civic Hospital was temporarily declared extraterritorial so that Princess Juliana of the Netherlands could technically give birth to her child on Dutch soil, so as not to affect its future claim to the throne. Clarke recognised the absurdity of the situation and was able to apply it to a group of Londoners who discover an ancient unrevoked charter which declares an area of Pimlico to legally be a part of Burgundy. Initially utilising this technicality to break from the restrictions of post-war rationing and enjoy late night lock-ins without police interference, the Pimlico residents quickly find themselves in over their heads with an influx of black marketeers and the British government’s attempts to starve them out by surrounding the area with barbed wire and inviting the “Burgundy” civilians to “emigrate.” But when this bizarre news story attracts a wave of public support for the Burgundians, the ongoing battle becomes even more complicated.
Passport to Pimlico feels like a foundational work in the Ealing Comedy canon because it establishes that rebellious post-war attitude in which the heroes of the piece are often as roguish as they are lovable. Like the devious Scottish islanders of Whiskey Galore!, the inhabitants of Pimlico/Burgundy are initially self-serving in their hedonistic opportunism but this behaviour quickly solidifies into an organised, mutually-beneficial group attitude as they join together against the opposition of the British Government. The unconventional take on morality that characterises so many of the Ealing Comedies relies on the audiences natural inclination to root for the small group over the big institution but for audiences of the era those proclivities would’ve been magnified by a shared experience of the scarcities of the post-war period. Passport to Pimlico offers a gleefully amoral form of vicarious wish fulfilment but also a welcome break from the clearcut archetypes of good and evil that populated wartime cinema.
As with the Ealing Comedies by Charles Crichton that preceded it (Hue and Cry and Another Shore), Passport to Pimlico benefits from a tremendous sense of place, a crucial factor given its themes of local and national identity, although its location shooting actually took place in Lambeth rather than Pimlico. Its focus on a small area of London during an intense heatwave makes the film feel simultaneously spacious and claustrophobic, in a similar manner to Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (which would have been an interesting but wholly inappropriate alternative title for Passport to Pimlico!). Cornelius encountered difficulties with consistent wet weather and his piecemeal, early morning shooting schedule annoyed producer Michael Balcon, who considered the film poorly directed. This split caused Cornelius to never work for Ealing again. Although Cornelius’s directorial style is not as polished as Crichton’s, his scrappier approach is entirely fitting for this story’s particular energy and he does a great job of wrangling a large amount of characters and incorporating several different techniques including montage and newsreels, without ever losing the crucial momentum. For a first time director, Clarke’s intricate and unusual screenplay must’ve been intimidating but Cornelius rose to the challenge beautifully.
A plot synopsis immediately makes clear that Passport to Pimlico is a farce but this is not the world of slamming doors and frenetic misunderstandings that such a description may conjure. Clarke’s brand of farce is measured and urbane, its necessary escalations feeling like unforced inevitabilities rather than far-fetched contrivances. Although certain characters are given prominence, notably Stanley Holloway’s affable shopkeeper and Hermione Baddeley’s dressmaker, Passport to Pimlico refreshingly treats the whole community as its protagonist, so wonderful character sketches like Charles Hawtrey’s bedraggled bar-worker or Margaret Rutherford’s batty professor are subsumed into the spotlight. While the loss of strong characterisations could’ve been a risk, Clarke manages instead to achieve a sense of connection with even the smallest players.
While some of the Ealing Comedies are uproariously funny, Passport to Pimlico relies more on a hugely satisfying, sustained absurdism that is characteristic of much of Clarke’s writing. If bursts of involuntary laughter are rare here, the fixed smile most viewers will experience throughout is a more than fair trade.
5. THE TITFIELD THUNDERBOLT
The Ealing Comedies have a reputation for being cosy but this assumption often comes from those who have never seen one or are misremembering. While there is an undeniable charm to these films, they often have a real edge, with pointed political themes and morally ambiguous, or often just flat-out criminal, characters. For the uninitiated, The Titfield Thunderbolt is probably what they imagine all Ealing Comedies to be. Although it is not without its own satirical edge, The Titfield Thunderbolt has an undeniably cosy atmosphere, set as it is in a small, picturesque English village with stone walls covered in blooming flowers, well-stocked alehouses and cricket on the green. This is the sort of mythical British idyll that one sometimes feels unnecessarily guilty for enjoying because it has been co-opted by the right wing. But the Tory ideal is a world like this that exists for white Brits and to the exclusion of everyone else, while The Titfield Thunderbolt gives the impression of a community that would embrace anyone, even if its 1953 production date means that an all-white population is inevitable.
This dream of bucolic bliss isn’t the only thing that Conservatives have attempted to claim as their own. The Ealing Comedy itself has often been claimed by those on the far right of the political spectrum, who see themselves in the little people pitted against the system, with the system in this interpretation being anyone who they see as encroaching on their whitewashed exclusionary attitudes. Far be it from me to claim the Ealing Comedy for the left either. It is more complex than that, with input from too many artists for it to be so black and white. And certainly, there is a strand of conservatism that is rarely more obvious than in The Titfield Thunderbolt, in which the nationalisation of the railways is the initiating factor in the inhabitants of Titfield losing their beloved private rail enterprise and having to rely on the growing dominance of Pearce and Crump’s coach service, a business with its sights very much set on crushing the local railway by any means necessary. So the heroes of our story are the country squire, the local vicar and the moneyed retired businessman whose patronage can be bought by appealing to his alcoholism. All factors you can very much imagine a Tory or Reform voter applauding. But there’s a flip-side to this coin which I can’t sum up any better than the excellent critic Mark Cunliffe, who observed:
“…look at the actual message of these films and they’re wonderfully socialist – something that is an anathema to the likes of Farage and his manipulative mob whose belief system begins and ends in every man for himself. The Titfield Thunderbolt is a prime example of the socialist principles that are the foundations of the Ealing narrative… the essence of their endeavour to run their own community railway is one of a pure Soviet collective at heart, and let’s remember that it only comes to a head because they’re determined to scupper the proto-Thatcherite monopoly of corrupt entrepreneurs Pearce and Crump…”
If the politics of The Titfield Thunderbolt are more complex than they might at first seem, the story itself has a beautiful simplicity to it as the ragbag collection of eccentric villagers are given a month to prove they can run the railway themselves and must deal with the repeated Dick Dastardly-esque attempts at sabotage from their rivals. This was the first Ealing Comedy shot in colour and the relative straightforwardness of the story allows plenty of opportunity to drink in the ravishing Technicolor imagery of the summertime countryside. One scene in which Stanley Holloway’s man of leisure Walter Valentine steps out into the sunshine and plucks a flower to place in his lapel feels like the epitome of the term “a breath of fresh air.” The Titfield Thunderbolt feels like a film that you don’t so much see with your eyes as take into your lungs. There are plenty of high-speed set-pieces and moments of conflict but the whole gorgeous thing has the effect of a relaxing but invigorating Sunday afternoon hike. This sustained atmosphere of joy is the result of a third pairing of screenwriter T.E.B. Clarke and director Charles Crichton, two of Ealing’s key players whose previous collaborations had resulted in the classics Hue and Cry and The Lavender Hill Mob. Though not quite as warmly received as its predecessors upon release, The Titfield Thunderbolt completes that Clarke/Crichton trilogy perfectly.
The Titfield Thunderbolt is often compared to its most obvious cousins, Passport to Pimlico and Whisky Galore!, in that all three films feature a disparate group united by a common cause. But those earlier films have a harder edge, given that the goals of the group are more self-serving and have an air of criminality. The inhabitants of Pimlico may stand together but their motives are more individually dubious, while Whisky Galore! revels in the cruelty of its climactic twist before abruptly punishing its roguish anti-heroes as well. These are tales of community conveniently serving individuals, whereas The Titfield Thunderbolt feels like a less cynical spin in which the individuals make sacrifices for the good of the community (the odd liquid bribe aside). The themes of the effects of progress on people’s lifestyles that are prevalent in The Man in the White Suit are also evident here, although again the ambiguity is replaced by a more clearly defined indication of for whom we should root. Perhaps it is this moral softening that resulted in The Titfield Thunderbolt being less well received than its Ealing contemporaries but its uncomplicated divide between the good guys and the baddies also gives it a wonderfully accessible momentum. This classic storytelling has allowed The Titfield Thunderbolt to pick up a head of steam across the decades and it now sits amongst the most beloved of Ealing Comedies, exactly where it belongs.
4. THE MAN IN THE WHITE SUIT
Alexander Mackendrick was saved from demotion to second unit work when his directorial debut Whisky Galore! became an unexpected international hit. If that first film benefited from the scrappy energy of an untried newcomer, The Man in the White Suit has the supreme confidence of an artist who has silenced his doubters. Co-written by Mackendrick, John Dighton (Kind Hearts and Coronets) and Roger MacDougall (rollicking Ealing Comedy prototype Cheer Boys Cheer), The Man in the White Suit filters the standard Ealing themes of the small man against the system through a modest Sci-Fi concept and emerges with a sparkling social satire which is lively, clever, moving and funny. Established Ealing leads Alec Guinness and Joan Greenwood are in place, while veteran actors Cecil Parker and Ernest Thesiger make their first of three Ealing Comedy appearances apiece. Cinematographer Douglas Slocombe is behind the camera to make the whole thing look beautiful once again. The stage is set for another classic and The Man in the White Suit gives us exactly that. Though often overlooked in favour of its more famous contemporaries, this little gem is top tier Ealing for sure.
For all those famous names I’ve already mentioned, a large chunk of the credit for The Man in the White Suit’s unique charm must go to sound editor Mary Habberfield. Few films are as prominently structured around a sound effect as The Man in the White Suit but the sound that accompanies the many appearances of the story’s elaborate contraption, an effect dubbed the Guggle Glub Gurgle, is perhaps the first thing that springs to mind at the mention of the film. It is a thing of aural beauty, combining the sounds of laboratory experiments with a Samba-like rhythm. Not only did it immediately become one of the greatest sound gags in cinema history, the Guggle Glub Gurgle was reused in numerous films and TV shows and even sampled by musicians as diverse as Jack Parnell and Orbital. Its use in The Man in the White Suit serves as both a comedic leitmotif and an important plot point, its distinctive, idiosyncratic sound signalling the surreptitious presence of its equally idiosyncratic creator, Guinness’s Sidney Stratton.
Stratton is another of Guinness’s beautifully observed, minor-key characterisations. He is a man of principle whose obsession with his idea for an indestructible fabric that never needs cleaning has driven him to obtain access to the resources he needs through dishonest means. Finagling his way into various laboratories, Stratton struggles to compete his experiments before being repeatedly found out. But when his invention turns out to be a success, Stratton’s problems get even worse when both the wealthy mill bosses and the workers’ trade unions realise the implications on their profits and jobs. Suddenly everyone wants the new fabric suppressed and Stratton finds himself pursued by all sides in his attempts to fulfil his destiny.
The average Sci-Fi Comedy would probably begin at the point that its central invention had just been created but The Man in the White Suit takes its time in showing the difficulty involved in funding and perfecting such a creation, especially when no-one believes in it. This early portion of the film establishes Stratton’s single-minded passion in order to set up his one-man battle against those attempting to suppress him in the second half. The Ealing formula of a small group against the establishment is pared down to a group of just two here, with Stratton and his only ally, Greenwood’s Daphne, the progressive daughter of a mill owner, taking on everyone. There are subtle but notable differences in how The Man in the White Suit portrays each side too. In previous Ealing Comedies, the small group were often driven by their own self-serving impulses, whereas Stratton’s obsession is borne of a desire to assist the progress of humankind. The forces he is fighting against, meanwhile, are not all the stuffy establishment figures we’re used to. The mill bosses represent the greed of rich men who don’t want to see a dip in their profits at any cost but the trade unionists have more in common with the little people of previous Ealing films, fighting to avoid the furthering of their deprivation. While my own personal politics doubtless influence this interpretation, the film itself seems to have similar leanings. It is broadly pro-progress but also acknowledges the price of rapid technological advancements. In an extremely effective moment, Stratton is accosted by Edie Martin’s poor washerwoman who asks “Why can’t you scientists leave things alone? What about my bit of washing when there’s no washing to do?” While betraying a certain level of Luddite conservatism, her question also underlines the complexity of the human cost of hasty advancements. Terrible things have been done in the name of progress as frequently as wonderful ones. Stratton’s reaction is perfect, the camera lingering on his troubled expression for several seconds. It is an acknowledgment of the complexity of the issue, something that is reflected in the film’s ending which is a combination of ominous and hopeful.
The Man in the White Suit represents the best of Ealing Comedy in the way it combines satisfying themes, interesting debates, charming character Comedy and thrilling action. Like Whisky Galore! before it, The Man in the White Suit becomes a frantic chase film by its climax, but the strange moralising coda imposed on Whisky Galore! is here replaced by a much more intriguing moral ambiguity, while that film’s surprising cruelty is replaced by an aspiring humanism which acknowledges that the right answers aren’t always easy to come by.
3. KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS
The Ealing Comedies were often characterised by nominal heroes with muddy moral codes. Passport to Pimlico’s rascally Londoners and Whiskey Galore’s conniving looters are two examples from 1949 but the film that was sandwiched between these two outings was the first to feature a protagonist who is calculatedly psychotic. Given that it is about a serial killer named Louis Mazzini systematically bumping off the members of the family who stand between him and a dukedom, one might assume that Kind Hearts and Coronets has none of the moral ambiguity of its contemporaries. In fact, the film works hard in its early stages to establish a loathsome tradition of class snobbery and mistreatment of the poor that makes Mazzini’s actions understandable, if not necessarily commendable. In making many of the victims so detestable, Kind Hearts and Coronets is able to achieve a gleefully amoral tone in which their deaths are largely hilarious. But there’s no fun in just watching a load of bastards be offed by the man they’ve oppressed and the film is careful to establish a greater complexity in its beautifully novelistic storytelling. Mazzini’s victims range from heartless toffs to an affable amateur photographer, a kindly old banker and an innocent woman caught in the crossfire. The vicarious thrill of seeing Mazzini dispatch an entitled bully is followed by the grim experience of watching a completely undeserving victim perish, albeit hilariously.
The amoral tone of Kind Hearts and Coronets, one of its major attractions, proved too much for Hays Code Hollywood who made numerous changes, altering the ending to make it less satisfyingly ambiguous, attempting to make the very obviously adulterous relationship between Mazzini and the equally vile Sibella seem more chaste, and cutting out derogatory lines aimed at the clergymen Reverend Henry D’Ascoyne, a doddery old buffer whose entire purpose is to be the butt of irreverent mockery. I’ve never seen this hack job version of Kind Hearts and Coronets but I’m guessing that no amount of tinkering could completely diffuse its wickedly hilarious impact. The relishable screenplay was co-written by John Dighton, who worked on several of Ealing’s finest films as well as the Oscar-nominated screenplay for Roman Holiday, and Robert Hamer, who also directed the film. His involvement with Kind Hearts and Coronets has ensured Hamer’s name is regularly mentioned among the key directors of Ealing Comedy but after this he only directed one more, the poorly-received His Excellency. Hamer did also direct several of the best dramatic Ealing films though, including the fantastic It Always Rains on Sunday and the eerie haunted mirror sequence of Horror anthology Dead of Night. These dramatic narratives stood him in good stead for Kind Hearts and Coronets, which benefits greatly from being played with the seriousness of a Period Drama. Not only does this make the acidity of the coldly deadpan jokes even more biting, it achieves a level of emotional engagement that was arguably lacking in its predecessors.
Amidst all the murderous vignettes, it’s easy to forget the romance in Kind Hearts and Coronets. In keeping with the general tone, it is an especially poisonous romance but some of the film’s best scenes are between Mazinni and Sibella, two despicable characters who magnify each other’s toxicity. When speaking of Kind Hearts and Coronets, critics are often in a rush to praise Alec Guinness’s performances as all eight members of the D’Ascoyne dynasty, but it is Dennis Price’s coolly detached turn as their killer which must carry the bulk of the film. Price is superb, exuding a charm which, though candid about its own superficiality, nonetheless works its magic on the viewer as well. Ealing Comedy regular Joan Greenwood is fantastically reptilian as the opportunistic Sibella and the ongoing dance between her and Mazzini is infuriatingly compelling, hypocritically displaying every aspect of the same brand of snobbery that is supposedly driving Mazzini’s quest. As the third member of the love triangle, the priggish but sympathetic Edith D’Ascoyne, Valerie Hobson is the picture of elegant dignity and a possible window of hope for Mazinni, were he not so insistently irredeemable. This parallel storyline provides Kind Hearts and Coronets with its throughline, tying itself in with a beautifully realised ironic twist in the final act.
Of course, there is a reason why critics rush to praise Alec Guinness in Kind Hearts and Coronets. The first appearance of arguably the MVP of the whole Ealing Comedy cycle is wonderfully ambitious. The film still would’ve worked had the D’Ascoyne family been played by eight different actors but the gimmick of having Guinness portray all of them is a masterstroke. Indeed, he was originally only considered to play four members of the family and it was Guinness himself who begged to be allowed to portray all eight. Though good makeup jobs and the trick cinematography of Douglas Slocombe help to complete the illusion, it is Guinness’s astute differentiations that make the whole thing believable. Some of the D’Ascoynes are mere sketches, with seconds of screentime and little-to-no dialogue, but Guinness makes them memorable, especially his strangely convincing drag act as the fiery Lady Agatha. Elsewhere, he is movingly human as Ascoyne D’Ascoyne and his young son, and hilarious as the crumbling cleric Reverend Lord Henry D’Ascoyne. Guinness’s casting is a trick that is simultaneously accentuated and concealed. The film proudly announces his multiple roles in the opening credits but part of the fun is watching just how well he disappears into each of them.
Kind Hearts and Coronets is the longest of the Ealing Comedies, eschewing the fleet and scrappy energy of some of its contemporaries in favour of a measured pace that places greater emphasis on droll wit and expansive storytelling. The result is the most prestige film of the cycle, now widely accepted not only as one of the great comedies but one of the greatest British films of all time. It’s a reputation well earned, with everything from the exquisite screenplay to Hamer’s finely timed direction and the performances of his whole cast feeding into its excellence. While producer Michael Balcon was understandably nervous about making a comedy about serial murder, Kind Hearts and Coronets’ artistic and critical success ultimately opened the door for the Ealing Comedies to get darker, more wicked and, consequently, even funnier.
2. THE LADYKILLERS
By the time The Ladykillers was released in 1955, the Ealing Comedy cycle was reaching its end and recent films like Meet Mr. Lucifer and Touch and Go suggested it was running out of steam. Writer William Rose had been responsible for that latter film, as well as The ‘Maggie’, neither of which lived up to the quality of earlier Ealing Comedies, and yet Rose’s earlier non-Ealing film Genevieve had been excellent. Genevieve had been developed in collaboration with ex-Ealing director Henry Cornelius (Passport to Pimlico) and was offered to Ealing producer Michael Balcon, but Balcon’s annoyance at Cornelius for leaving Ealing meant he passed on what was to become a smash hit. But while Balcon was not keen on readmitting someone who had jumped ship, he had no qualms about bringing Rose on board, especially after Genevieve bagged him a surprise Oscar nomination. Rose’s tenure at Ealing proved profitable but his first couple of films didn’t quite endure as classics or, in the case of Touch and Go, stick in many people’s memories at all. But it was a case of third time lucky when the idea for The Ladykillers came to Rose in a dream, ultimately leading to his second original screenplay Oscar nomination. While Touch and Go and The ‘Maggie’ had been more sentimental efforts, The Ladykillers reinstated the harder satirical edge of classic Ealing Comedies and pulled the cycle out of a mid-point lull to deliver a late game masterpiece that many see as the defining work of the Ealing brand.
The Ladykillers is the story of the frail but surprisingly resilient Mrs. Wilberforce, a sweet old lady whose eccentricities lead many to underestimate her, including the gang of villains who conspire to manipulate her into unknowingly helping out in a security van robbery. But when she inadvertently stumbles on the truth, the crooks decide one of them must put an end to her for good… only none of them wants to be the one to do the job. The best of the Ealing Comedies have a dark side to them and, along with Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Ladykillers is the darkest of the lot. While criminal activity is a recurring theme, only a handful of the Ealing Comedies went as far as mining comedy from murder and The Ladykillers does so with a delicious mix of laughter and suspense. While some of the Comedies of this era are longer on charm than they are on laughs, The Ladykillers is frequently hilarious in its use of vivid characters, witty dialogue and a superbly ironic mousetrap of a plot. Rose’s screenplay knows exactly when to switch between ominous and ridiculous, which it does repeatedly, and Alexander Mackendrick’s direction enhances this tricky manoeuvre immeasurably. Mackendrick is excellent here, bringing out the full impact of every scene by making the most of the comedic abilities of his exceptional cast. Little moments like Peter Sellers struggling to put his jacket on or Alec Guinness battling to retrieve his ten foot scarf from under the foot of one of his associates are used to maximise the comic effect of every scene, building into an unforgettable picture of inspired mayhem.
The cast of The Ladykillers is one of the best comedy ensembles Ealing ever assembled. Cecil Parker, Herbert Lom and Jack Warner all had previous Ealing Comedy experience, while Peter Sellers, soon to be a major star, makes his Ealing debut in a nicely drawn little Spiv role. Danny Green is memorable as One Round, the sole likeable member of the gang, and there are small cameos for Frankie Howerd and an uncredited Kenneth Connor in what, it must be said, is the only scene in the film that doesn’t really work. It is there to illustrate how Mrs. Wilberforce’s insistent moral stances can cause havoc for those around her but Howerd’s personality is far too forceful for the part, stealing focus too prominently from what should be the real subject of the scene. But a small transgression like this hardly matters in the face of The Ladykillers’ beautifully complimentary pair of central performances by Katie Johnson and Alec Guinness. Although his performance initially garnered less acclaim than some of his previous turns for Ealing, Guinness is extraordinary here. What some critics may have taken for mere caricature is actually a deftly studied comedic characterisation that enhances every line and joke so as to almost double its effect. There’s a tremendous physicality to Guinness’s portrayal of Professor Marcus, the mastermind of the gang, and whether he is poised in self-aggrandising anticipation or slumped in defeat over a piano, he’s never less than perfect. Guinness himself was convinced Alastair Sim should’ve played the role and it’s easy to imagine him having been excellent in it but Guinness is utterly unforgettable. It’s genuinely one of my favourite performances of all time. Fortunately, old pro Katie Johnson is up to the challenge of sharing scenes with him. Her Mrs. Wilberforce is endearing without being cloying, believably eccentric without being broadly dotty, and understated in a manner that, again, increases the impact of the punchlines twofold. When the Coen Brothers made their execrable remake of The Ladykillers, they reimagined the central old lady as a headstrong, aggressive and physically imposing presence, which completely destroys the crucial joke of her managing to single-handedly wipe out a gang of crooks. Johnson ensures that joke works to maximum effect and her delicate, considered and hilarious performance deservedly won her a BAFTA.
The average film involving a heist would save it for the big finish but The Ladykillers dispenses with its robbery very early on. This is a wise move, for while Mackendrick ensures that a sense of the wider world is evoked, The Ladykillers is at its best when confined to the area in and around Mrs. Wilberforce’s cramped, dilapidated home. Here we watch the deceit take place, the secret get found out and the subsequent manipulations fail, leading to the murderous attempts that give the film its name (as well as the immortal line “Put him in the barrow”, which owes its hilarity entirely to Guinness’s wearied delivery). The attempted murders are obviously fun and provide the film with its delightfully dark denouement, but the scenes leading up to the climax are even better. The shot in which we see the villains forced to partake in a lively tea party with Mrs. Wilberforce’s elderly friends is, for my money, one of the funniest in all of cinema, while the scenes in which Guinness tries to convince Mrs. Wilberforce that no-one would benefit from returning the money are beautifully written, enhanced by their delivery being accompanied by the sight of Professor Marcus and his gang assisting with the washing up. Little details like this provide these wonderful performers with the constant opportunity to use their physicality and showcase their ability to imbue the smallest actions with cherishable visual wit.
Like the majority of the Ealing Comedies, The Ladykillers adheres to a slender runtime, ensuring there is no flab to gum up the gears of its impeccable construction. It is as compact as the lopsided domicile in which it takes place and manages to pack more into 90 minutes than you’ll find in the average two-hour-plus film. It is yet another practically perfect film from Ealing.
1. THE LAVENDER HILL MOB
The Lavender Hill Mob reunited director Charles Crichton and screenwriter T.E.B. Clarke for the first time since their excellent Hue and Cry kicked off the Ealing Comedy cycle four years previously. In the meantime, Stanley Holloway and Alec Guinness had established themselves as two of Ealing’s stalwarts and their attachment to the project boosted its prestige even further. Numerous other tried and tested collaborators were assembled for the film, from producer Michael Balcon to cinematographer Douglas Slocombe, editor Seth Holt and composer Georges Auric, all of whom had been involved in Hue and Cry and numerous other Ealing successes. This stellar assembly of professionals resulted in that rare thing: a practically perfect movie. Although it often lives in the twin shadows of Kind Hearts and Coronets and The Ladykillers, for me The Lavender Hill Mob is the absolute cream of the Ealing crop, which places it amongst the greatest British films ever made.
A large part of the credit for The Lavender Hill Mob’s excellence must go to T.E.B. Clarke’s Oscar-winning screenplay, which is one of the most skilfully crafted and brilliantly concise pieces of storytelling I’ve ever seen. Clarke’s screenplays for Ealing thus far had been largely excellent but The Lavender Hill Mob is a cut above, with none of the strange narrative cul-de-sacs of the previous year’s The Magnet. In a refreshingly brisk 81 minutes, Clarke immediately dives headlong into the plot, deftly introducing his characters without ever slowing down the plot. The only diversions from the tight narrative are there to create further suspense and tension, which ultimately feeds the whole experience. The film tells the story of Henry “Dutch” Holland, a fastidious but apparently unremarkable bank clerk whose main duties involve overseeing the delivery of gold bullion. Unbeknownst to the employers who routinely underestimate him, Dutch has been slowly formulating a plot to steal a million pounds worth of bullion but he is stuck on one detail: how to smuggle the gold abroad where he could safely sell it on the black market. The solution to his problem arrives along with a verbose artist called Alfred Pendlebury who takes up lodgings in his building, and together the pair assemble a small gang to carry out the heist. Although there are mistakes from the outset, stealing the gold proves to be the easiest part. Keeping track of it all in the aftermath is less so.
Alec Guinness received his first Oscar nomination for the role of Dutch and it’s not hard to see why. This was Guinness’s first major leading role in an Ealing Comedy after scene-stealing supporting turns in Kind Hearts and Coronets and A Run for Your Money, and he steps up to the plate with a mesmerising characterisation that feels 100% real from his unfiltered fussiness to his subtly understated rhotacism. The core of The Lavender Hill Mob’s absurdism rests on a thoroughly unremarkable man stepping into the role of criminal mastermind and Guinness manages to make Dutch simultaneously uncharismatic and fascinating, unlikeable but very easy to root for. While lesser actors might’ve been tempted to overplay Dutch’s quirks and exaggerate his dullness to the point of caricature, Guinness seems to instinctively know the exact degree to which he can push each trait and mannerism in order to make it both entertaining and realistic. It’s a marvellous performance.
Pairing Guinness with Stanley Holloway is a masterstroke. By this stage the two men were arguably Ealing’s most effective Comedy players and Crichton marries their contrasting styles with a level of perfection that seems effortless. Not only do the two actors compliment each other perfectly, their characters do too. These two very different men seem to find something in each other that their lives are lacking, and their blossoming friendship is one of the script’s best beats. More straightforward Comedy capers generally steer clear of emotional believability in favour of broad hijinks but Clarke and Crichton both recognise that the key to The Lavender Hill Mob’s magic is in the characters, their motivations and their interactions. There are plenty of fun action set-pieces but they are enhanced significantly by the chemistry between Guinness and Holloway. Witness the scene in which they make a frantic dash down the spiral staircase of the Eiffel Tower and, amidst their desperation, begin giggling like a couple of schoolboys. This is the moment it becomes clear that the break from their humdrum existences and the human connection they have made is every bit as important to them as the financial implications. This is Comedy that is moving without ever having to make the pathos overt. This is epitomised by the quiet mix of sadness and satisfaction with which Crichton and Guinness imbue the final scene. Dutch accepts his fate as if it is a victory, suggesting that after 20 years of mundanity and isolation, the whole thing has been thoroughly worth it.
The Lavender Hill Mob is in the tradition of the small-man-against-the-establishment template that characterises so many of the Ealing Comedies but it is one of the more extreme examples. In terms of moral transgressions, the misdemeanours of Passport to Pimlico and Whisky Galore! pale in comparison with the outright criminality of The Lavender Hill Mob, which is only trumped by the murderous machinations of Kind Hearts and Coronets and The Ladykillers. While those films are driven by vile protagonists who delight us by tapping into our darkest inclinations, the characters in The Lavender Hill Mob are surprisingly easy to root for, despite choosing theft in the face of perfectly maintainable, legally viable lives. It is perhaps the sense of trying to escape one’s own perceived insignificance which resonates in this case. But for all its underlying thematic concerns, The Lavender Hill Mob still works on the level of those aforementioned straightforward crime Comedies. It is filled with bungled plots and farcical chases, surprising twists and cleverly dovetailed plot points. There are small but well-realised supporting performances by Sid James and Alfie Bass, Ealing’s resident little old lady Edie Martin, and even an early cameo from a pre-fame Audrey Hepburn. There is beautifully shot international location work in post-war London and Paris. If you’re looking for the thrill of a classic caper, it’s all here but if you’re looking for more, you’ll find that too, and all in a sub-90 minute runtime. A perfect film.