Although Charles Barr has ‘always found the charm of this
film very resistible,’ I think there remains a lot of fun and enjoyment to be
found in this often slapstick-laden Ealing comedy: the first of the post-war
series that, for many, still defines what we mean by Ealing Studios. Like many
of the Ealing films covered in this blog, it is not perfect – the supporting
performance by Alastair Sim is tonally distinct from the rest of the film
(which, depending on your preference, may be a good thing), and the film occasionally
opts for the easy gag rather than anything more inventive – but the energy of
the main performers, the impressive location shooting, and some wry creative
touches, largely offsets those problems.
Set in and around various bombsites and derelict landscapes,
the film follows eager wannabe sleuth Joe Kirby (Harry Fowler), who accidentally
uncovers a criminal plot to plan and execute robberies through codes embedded
into the pages of kid’s comic Trump. Along
with other kids from his local neighbourhood, including Alec (Douglas Barr), Arthur
(David Simpson), Roy (Stanley Escane), Dicky (Gerald Fox) and token female
Clarry (Joan Dowling), Joe attempts to track down the mastermind behind the
plan, and bring him to justice, meeting up with the comic story’s author Felix H.
Wilkinson (Alastair Sim), Covent Garden businessman Nightingale (Jack Warner)
and Police Inspector Ford (Jack Lambert) along the way.
The strength of the film is not its narrative, however,
which efficiently moves its characters from scrape to scrape: it flows largely
because of the child actors, who all give strong performances that rise above the
uneven sections of the script (there is a slapstick fight in a department store
followed by a more tense sequence navigating the unfamiliar world of the sewers
that would simply not convince without strong work from the younger actors).
The characters are well observed as well, with Joe, Alec, Roy and Clarry having
particularly distinct views and opinions, rather than all being written as interchangeable
kids. As for the adults, Lambert and Warner are solid, while Sim hogs his
limited screen time with a real star turn: he is doing his own melodramatic and
mannered thing, in a different register to the rest of the film, but which
largely works because his (brief) appearances are also separated from the bulk
of the action and the cast.
The film also looks impressive, because of its
much-vaunted location shooting. While this has come up around other Ealing
films of the period, Hue & Cry
succeeds because of the prominence it gives its post-war ruined landscapes.
From the kid’s meeting place in the midst of a ruined building, to the
warehouses that are the setting for the final kids vs. crooks fight scene, the
vision of a bombed-out London persists. That is not to say the film is aiming
for a purely realist tone: studio scenes in the stairwell of Wilkinson’s flat play
and the aforementioned sewer tunnel sequence flirt with horror and suspense tropes
as much as an implied realism. The film uses its locations for strong dramatic
purpose – the final cat-and-mouse chase between Joe and Nightingale through a
derelict building is enhanced by the uneven walls, gaping holes in the floor
and exposed stairs.
While this may sound like a damning statement, one of the
film’s most enjoyable stylistic and comic touches happens during its title
sequence. The film’s credits are painted on a series of ‘real’ brick walls, against
which kids play cricket, throw stones at each other, run past, ride bikes, jump
over the walls, etc. As the camera pans and cuts between these different areas
of wall, you can see the graffiti that surrounds the main credits (Union Jacks,
cricket stumps, stick figures, arrows, insulting messages to some of the film’s
characters, a steam train) and which points to broader issues of Ealing’s
interest in representing aspects of British society, but also to other Ealing films
before and after 1947. While setting up the anarchic spirit of the film’s younger
characters, there are also playful comic touch that relate to the production itself:
a ‘Kilroy was here’ title (or, given its British provenance, a Chad title) that
reads ‘Wot No Producer?’ before the camera pans right to show Michael Balcon’s
name; equally, graffiti has been added to director Charles Crichton’s name so
that it reads ‘King Charles Crichton’, and a policeman’s shadow passes over
this image, perhaps a suggestion of how Crichton saw his role in marshalling
cast and crew for this film?
The titles also reveal the presence of Mary Habberfield
as Sound Editor – a role that is highlighted throughout the film, in creating the
unease in the sequences that play with horror (noted above), but also in the
department store fight, which is accompanied by a malfunctioning speak-your-weight
machine, a nice aural touch in an otherwise bland sequence.
These little creative touches, and the well-cast young
performers, raise the film above its standard narrative devices, and give
strong support to any claim that this is where the post-war Ealing comedy
machine began.
[Hue & Cry is
available on DVD from Studio Canal UK. See www.studiocanal.co.uk for more details]
Next time, we go back to an earlier comedy made at Ealing, Let's Be Famous (1939)...
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