Michael Balcon often identified this film as an early
example of what he believed Ealing films to be capable of: a character study
about (allegedly) realistic people and situations, a commentary on modern
society, with a focus on community and the representation of British concerns.
Yet while that description fits There
Ain’t No Justice it also speaks to some of the film’s (and studio’s)
problems, particularly a reliance on normative endings which displace the
interesting morally grey material at the heart of the story into more
black-and-white terms.
The story feels well-worn today, and was likely so even
in 1939: Tommy Mutch (Jimmy Hanley) enters the world of professional boxing to
make money and impress Connie Fletcher (Jill Furse). Helped by his trainer,
Tommy gets a deal with local promoter Sammy Sanders (Edward Chapman), who plans
to fix a series of matches between Tommy and Frankie Fox (Michael Hogarth).
Needing money to help his sister Elsie (Phyllis Stanley), and distracted by the
sexual allure of Sammy’s girl Dot Ducrow (Nan Hopkins), Tommy has to decide
whether to take a dive or stand up to Sammy.
The film opens with a dedication to ‘the small time
boxer, who has too long been at the mercy of both managers and public’, and
expresses the hope that it may help ‘those who are struggling to improve his
lot.’ Charles Barr notes that the narrative is more concerned with crooked
managers / promoters Sammy and Alfie Norton (Gus McNaughton), than it is the
questioning the public, but like Ealing’s later film The Square Ring (1953), the mass boxing crowd is presented as a
potentially dangerous body of (largely) men. This is not the safe and
comfortable community of Notting Hill the film celebrates in an early dance
scene (where Tommy meets Connie, and all the locals dance to ‘Knees Up Mother
Brown’), but a darker place baying for entertainment, chanting at bloodied
fighters, and seemingly ready to tip over into violence (while the final riot
is caused by external influence, and played partly for comedy, it also appears
to be a comment on the problems of this mass gathering). It may even be that
Ealing gets more cynical with age: the boxing arena’s call for charity (here,
for a blinded boxer) is repeated in The
Square Ring, where the charity box is stolen by a member of the audience.
So, that idea of different communities is central, and
the socially ‘correct’ community ultimately wins, with Tommy choosing to leave
boxing for married life with Connie. Equally, problematic sexuality is
constantly displaced: as Dot increases her seduction of Tommy, Connie is shown
in a maternal role, cradling a baby; Elsie’s boyfriend Lenny Charteris (Michael
Wilding) starts as a sexual figure, but that potency is reduced when they get
engaged, then avoided when he robs the milk bar where she works and runs away
(allowing Tommy to step into a patriarchal role, finding the money to support
himself and Connie, and save Elsie). As this suggests, family is also key, with
Tommy’s parents Alfred (Edward Rigby) and Ma (Mary Clare) functioning as secondary
comic characters. An early scene where the five members of the Mutch family
move around the cramped kitchen having breakfast is particularly strong in setting
up the dynamic of their lives.
To Balcon, and to later critics, this coalescing of
different strands of what later came to stand for ‘Ealing Studios’ is partly
the influence of director Pen Tennyson and his belief in opting for more
realistic characters, situations and dialogue. Certainly when compared to The Gaunt Stranger (1938) or The Four Just Men (1939), the focus on a
working class family does allow the film to make some claims to realism, but
the film’s balance of drama and comedy is hardly more revolutionary than Let’s Be Famous (1939) or Saloon Bar (1940), which also foreground
regional accents and community-based ensemble filmmaking, simply in more
generic formats. That is not to say that There
Ain’t No Justice had no influence: it is easy to see echoes of it in It Always Rains on Sunday (1947) and The Blue Lamp (1950), although it lacks
the strong location work of those later films (apart from an early pan round
real London streets), and tends to rely on its boxing melodrama rather than
building up the world its disparate characters inhabit.
Best seen as a first attempt at what Balcon believed
Ealing was capable of, and should pursue, There
Ain’t No Justice falters when seen out of that context, too restricted by
narrative conventions and without the full courage of its realist convictions
to flesh out its characters and situations.
[UPDATED April 2014: There Ain't No Justice is now available as part of The Ealing Studios Rarities Collection, Volume 8, from Network]
Next time, revolution in Australia in Eureka Stockade (1949)...
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