The Great Ealing Film Challenge 34: Davy (1957)

Obviously designed as a showcase for 1950s British television and radio star Harry Secombe, Davy is a difficult film to love, with an often leaden pace, limited narrative development and forced performances from the cast. It is hard to argue with Charles Barr’s assessment of the film as a last-gasp attempt to hold the ‘family’ of Ealing Studios together the same way Davy Morgan (Secombe) hopes to maintain his own family and their music hall act, the Mad Morgan’s. While there are aspects of the film that do work – notably its use of colour, visual composition, some of the musical sequences – its attempt to revitalise Ealing Studio’s fortunes by focusing on the dying art of the music hall appears misguided at best.

‘I think we should all stick together... All families should stick together.’

Davy Morgan is the lynchpin of British music hall comedians, the Mad Morgan’s – an act that also includes his uncle Pat (George Relph), sister Gwen (Susan Shaw), her husband George (Ron Randell) and friend Eric (Bill Owen). Their show is popular, but doesn’t appear to be going anywhere, something that Davy seems oblivious to, but which irritates George, particularly when they might have a big booking agent interested in them. Focusing on six to seven hours of one day, the film shows how the Morgan family react to the news of Davy having an opportunity at the Royal Opera House, Davy’s audition for Sir Giles Manning (Alexander Knox), and Davy’s decision about his future.

Given the slightness of the story, director Michael Relph (a long-standing Ealing producer and production designer) offers little to move the story along, often pausing the narrative for three or four minutes for a music hall routine, or an operatic performance. While the former contains much energy, notably from Secombe, it fails to establish the Mad Morgan’s as anything other than a struggling, second-rate act (yet one the audience is supposed to be rooting for, particularly in the later stages). And with the latter, the film offers two audition pieces: Davy’s (which ends badly, due to an overly signposted piece of slapstick involving his young nephew Tim, who has been wandering around backstage), and Jo Reeves’ (Adele Leigh, in a thankless and underwritten role). While both are well-performed, they offer little narrative information, and are largely static in presentation: a combination of medium and close-up images of the singers, intercut with Manning in the stalls.

This is not to say that film composition should be slaved to narrative, but that the sequences offer little additional spectacle or visually interesting sequences. Indeed, other aspects of the film give stronger examples of how framing or colour can be used to enrich a simple sequence: several scenes are restricted to the Morgan’s dressing room, where Relph and director of photography Douglas Slocombe (one of Ealing’s foremost cinematographers) place the characters across the width of the Technirama screen, and carefully pick out particular colours across the image. As George, Gwen, Pat, Eric and Davy argue, they are getting dressed for their performance: Gwen’s contributions are highlighted by donning a purple dress, Pat by an orange clown-wig, while Davy starts to dominate by adding more colourful layers to his costume (a bright blue shirt, a pink bow-tie, a yellow and orange-striped jacket). Equally, many of the scenes in the main auditorium of the Opera House play with red colours and shadows, most noticeably Jo and Davy’s first sight of the room, small figures immersed in the red and shadowy space at the rear of the stalls.

Yet colour, composition and musical sequences are not enough to sustain the film, particularly when so many narrative and character ideas remain unexplored. There are subplots around Pat’s previous partnership with Dai Morgan (Davy and Gwen’s father), George’s dissatisfaction with the group (and wife Gwen), Gwen’s role as mediator, Eric’s unrequited love for Gwen, and Jo and Davy’s romance, to name but a few. The possibility of romance – tied in with the offer of a career as an opera singer – is one Davy rejects, but the reason (his career, being on the road, Jo’s different trajectory) feels as unrealistic as his decision to stay with the Mad Morgan’s. Given the way the film depicts Pat’s unhappiness at Dai’s decision not to become a serious actor (and break up the Morgan Brothers’ act), Davy appears to be repeating his father’s mistakes, rather than learning from his family.

The film does create a chaotic backstage atmosphere, suggesting some of the liveliness of the music hall tradition that the film wants to celebrate, but the other characters that inhabit this space aren’t fleshed out and are largely ciphers (the cross-dressing singer, the man with dressed-up chimps, the bad comic, the glamorous dancing girls). The film sets up a series of small events – Herbie (Kenneth O’Connor) trying to come up with a gag about shooting a moose, Davy’s tendency to lend money to a gambler and the monkey trainer – that pay off in the end (Herbie comes up with a gag, the horse wins, the monkey recovers), seemingly because Davy has chosen to remain with the show. The suggestion is that his family is not just the Mad Morgan’s, but the music hall tradition as a whole – by staying with that extended family, by continuing the struggle against the odds, Davy is doing the morally correct thing – he is embracing community, not individual opportunity.

But it feels like the wrong message, at the wrong time, for the wrong reasons: the film has not given the audience any reason to believe this is Davy’s future – if anything, the lengthy sequence of him at Covent Garden shows he could succeed there. If the themes of Davy are a representation of the final days of Balcon’s Ealing – people staying because they felt morally bound to this makeshift ‘family’, rather than because of any particular burning creative desire – then perhaps the studio was in worse shape than the other later films demonstrate.

[UPDATED April 2014: Davy is now available as part of The Ealing Studios Rarities Collection, Volume 4, from Network]

Next time, trying to leave the country proves difficult in Touch and Go (1955)...

The Great Ealing Film Challenge 33: Ships with Wings (1941)

Watching and writing about each of these Ealing films there is often a struggle between considering them as individual entries, and linking them to an overarching and dominant narrative of what Ealing did, or was capable of. It is one of the reasons that Charles Barr’s Ealing Studios and George Perry’s Forever Ealing books are the main points of reference, as they do try and encompass the whole of the studio’s output, and make a coherent argument about the studio across the twenty-one years of activity this blog covers. Yet there are times – and watching Ships with Wings is one of those times – when the focus on the content of an individual film complicates its place within that larger hierarchy.

Here, for example, Barr notes the film seems ‘amazingly dated,’ that Churchill threatened to postpone the film’s release (because its climax could be seen as a disaster for the dramatised Fleet Air Arm), and states the ‘wildly romantic’ triumph lacked ‘anything... for general audiences to associate with.’ (Barr 1980, 24-5) Barring the Churchill note, these are a troubling claims, largely because they see the film in relation only to Ealing’s other wartime productions, and the themes of community, pulling together and inter-class cooperation that are seen to dominate the best British wartime films. The following discussion is, therefore, not an attempt to easily reclaim this film (it remains highly problematic in its depiction of the enemy, and of women, for example) but to think about it as a film in its own right.

Covering four years in the life of aircraft carrier HMS Invincible (the fictional name for the HMS Ark Royal – the ship gets a starring credit after the actors in the opening titles), the film is initially less interested in the ship’s crew, and more in three heroic pilots, Lt Dick Stacey (John Clements), Lt Maxwell (Michael Rennie) and Lt David Grant (Michael Wilding), who will serve on the carrier. Although we see them ‘at work,’ the focus falls on their relationships, notably with the Wetherby family: Admiral Wetherby (Leslie Banks), his daughter Celia (Jane Baxter), who carried a torch for Stacey, and son Mickey (Hugh Burden), who wants to be a pilot in the Fleet Air Arm on the Invincible. Wetherby is an older officer, who dismisses the carrier as ‘a floating garage’ and ‘a block of tenements’: in one sense, he is the film’s Colonel Blimp-style figure who thinks a naval battle should be fought in traditional ways, with big guns, not with fighter planes and bombers.

Lt Stacey falls for Celia, now she’s older, and breaks it off with girlfriend (and famous singer/actress) Kay Gordon (Ann Todd). But the competition between the three pilots for Celia reaches its pitch when, to impress Mickey, Stacey takes him up in a test plane that has a dodgy wing. With the wing threatening to break loose, Stacey tells Mickey to bail out; then does so himself – but Mickey, obsessed with being a pilot, stays onboard, and attempts to land it. His death, and Stacey’s determination to fly a plane he’d been told needed repairs, is enough to get Stacey dismissed from the Navy.

As should already be clear, the first half of the film is more interested in romantic dilemmas than professional ones: and this continues, as the film follows Stacey as he retreats to a Greek island, working as a pilot-for-hire for ‘Papa’ Papadopoulos (Edward Chapman). The outbreak of war has little immediate impact on Stacey, but the arrival of Kay (and some German spies) on the island soon brings the war home to him. Again, the emphasis is on romance and character psychology – Stacey wants to reenlist (Wetherby turns down the request, despite support from Invincible’s captain Fairfax – Basil Sydney), but it is the death of Kay and Papa at the hands of German agents that really propels him back into the war, and back into the seat of a fighter plane.

The final act of the film, an aerial attack by the Fleet Air Arm, when naval passage is blocked by a minefield, brings Stacey back to the beginning, meeting up with Maxwell and Grant (now married to Celia), and (with losses mounting up) ordered back into action by Wetherby. At first, Stacey is absent, left to sit in the mess room while all the other pilots head out and engage the Germans. Inevitably, he is asked to go up in support of his friends on a final raid on the German base. Yet the centrality of Stacey as a character means he is motivated by individual psychology rather than broader wartime concerns – he wants revenge on the Germans for killing Kay and Papa, as much as this is the right thing for Britain. In fact, the film may be unsure how to deal with that kind of individualism, given that Stacey’s fate is dying in a suicide run, flying himself (and a German bomber) into a dam, wiping out a German airfield, armoured division and harbour. Barr’s note that this is a ‘wildly romantic’ ending, while accurate, ignores the fact that the whole film has been romantic, rather than logical. In many ways, it feels like a Hollywood film in places, emphasising the individual contributions of one heroic individual rather than the communal success that British war films would become known for.

But what of the claim this might make the film ‘amazingly dated’? Some elements of the schizophrenic narrative have not weathered well: Kay is underdeveloped, and has two song sequences that feel out of place in the larger film (she appears to have walked in from another film, one about fashion and opulence in London society – the film’s treatment of her big song, a Christmas piece about Santa, could be from a musical, the filming style feels so different); the portrayal of the German, Italian and Greek characters is rooted in stereotype (while Papa gets a hero’s death, standing up to the German invasion of his island, the Italians are derided – often by the Germans – and the British view is simply that ‘You can’t argue with Germans, you just have to kick ‘em in the pants’); but overall, the film stands up at least as well as San Demetrio, London (1943), even if its aims are drastically different.

Ealing’s emphasis on strong location shooting remains prominent here, making a star of the Ark Royal with on-site filming of planes landing, wings folding up, and moving up and down on hydraulic platforms within the ship. Yet this is also another strong outing for Ealing’s special effects department: yes, the effects can appear dated, but that would be an unfair (and retrospective) assessment that ignores how strong such work would have been in 1941. The film’s combination of documentary-style footage of the Ark Royal, and its planes, is (mostly) well-matched with solid model work depicting dogfights, bombing raids, and – towards the end – an attack on German airfield, dam, and battalions of German tanks and vehicles. The special effects are clearly models, but sparingly intercut with the other footage, they do create tension and scale which, again, stands up well in comparison with other Ealing war films.

The final assessment of the film, therefore, returns to this notion of its status as an individual film or part of a larger Ealing war effort. There are obvious links with later Ealing productions: where The Cruel Sea would discuss men being wedded to their ships, Maxwell and Fairfax are both described as being ‘married to an aircraft carrier;’ the focus on officers rather than the broader crew ties in with post-war interest in that specific class; and despite the presence of two female characters, the film is largely uninterested in developing them beyond bland love interests. However, in its focus on the character of Stacey, and the domestic life of the officer class, the film remains interesting in the choices it makes about depicting wartime endeavour and loss.

Next time, the music hall beckons for Harry Secombe and Davy (1957)...

The Great Ealing Film Challenge 32: Johnny Frenchman (1945)

If ever a film brought together the broad stereotypes of what Ealing Studios is famous for, Johnny Frenchman is it. A documentary impulse wedded to a patriotic narrative about communities pulling together, with comic undertones and well-drawn characters, filmed largely on location, this ticks many of the Ealing Studios boxes. It’s also about wartime, serving your country, and the possibilities of post-war society. Although saddled with an episodic narrative, the performances, editing and location work are largely worth the effort.

The story, set between 1939 and 1945, is about the relationship between two Cornish and Breton villages, one born of competition and rivalry (the Breton fishermen are accused of poaching crabs from the sea nearby) which develops through romance and jealousy, to one where everyone pulls together for the common good. From calls at the beginning that ‘Johnny Frenchman’ should be sent back where they came from, to claims that ‘we are friends at last’ and that the two villages have become one, this is fairly populist propaganda about European neighbours and post-war partnership.

The film’s main drama is romantic, as Sue Pomeroy (Patricia Roc, on loan to Ealing from Gainsborough) has to choose between her long-term childhood sweetheart Bob Tremayne (Ralph Michael, in full stalwart but dull mode) and dashing Yan Kervarec (Paul Dubois). Yet while this is the heart of the film, it can be slow-moving, as Sue accepts she doesn’t love Bob, is attracted to Yan, decides she loves Yan, Yan is taken away by the war, Bob returns, and then finally Yan and Sue marry. This element of the plot often drags, as there is no real tension, as Bob is presented as solid and dependable – Charles Barr notes that Bob is never anything more than a sporting loser who displaces his feelings into fishing and being in service. While that does Bob a slight disservice (he and Yan do have a wrestling scene and a punch-up during a French-English singing practice) Ralph Michael has little to work with here to develop the character, and he and Roc share absolutely no chemistry, meaning Bob is never presented as a serious contender for Sue’s affections. Yan, by contrast, is active, charming, sexual and masculine – even if Bob does somehow break his thigh (?) during their wrestling bout. While there is no sense of an homoerotic bond between Yan and Bob, the film does go out of its way to put them together (wrestling, fighting, serving on the same boat, and then pouring drinks together in the pub in one of the final scenes), often abandoning Sue to the company of unidentified village women and children.

But if the Sue-Bob-Yan love triangle is not the film’s main appeal, what is? In terms of performances and characters, that belongs to the relationship between harbour master Nat Pomeroy (Tam Walls) and Lanec Florrie (Francoise Rosay), the elder states-people of their respective villages, and a grumpy odd couple. The film is underpinned by their bickering and one-upmanship: Florrie leads the French poachers, Nat steals her boat keys until she pays harbour taxes; Nat bans Florrie from fishing on a Sunday, Florrie goes out anyway. The scene where Nat and Florrie argue about Yan and Sue marrying is particularly strong, due to Walls and Rosay’s performances, conveying the characters’ shock at realising they actually agree for the first time.

The relationship takes a strange turn in the final third of the film: when Nat bans Sue from his house for marrying Yan, Florrie appears to move in, and is suddenly helping Nat take off his boots, and cooking for him and his younger son. Her role becomes more domestic, and their verbal sparring decreases. That seems to be preparing the way for the final rapprochement between the villages, as Florrie sails out to ward off a floating mine that is heading into the harbour, thus saving all their boats (and livelihoods) and preventing a disaster. For this, she is hoisted on the Cornish villager’s shoulders, and carried to the pub for a celebration: and there, announces ‘I know we are friends, at last. When the war is over and we go home again, don’t think you’ll get rid of us, we’ll be back... we’ll be back because we’ve found another home here.’

So, the theme of community – and of communities coming together, and getting over their differences – is strong throughout, and drives most of the character and narrative dynamics: for all the fighting and uncertainty, both communities help out the other when it is needed (the French hide British soldiers when the Germans arrive, the British welcome French refugees feeling the Nazis). Much of this is also done visually, with the location filming helping to create a strong sense of the small Cornish village based around its harbour and fishing industry. At several points in the film, these streets and alleyways are thronged with villagers rushing to and from the harbour, or the pub, giving a real sense of the wider community beyond the main characters (in this sense, it is reminiscent of similar scenes in Whisky Galore! (1949). The documentary impulse is also strong around community imagery: the fishermen on the beach pulling together to drag in a net full of fish (which is given a commentary from an older fisherman on the hill, functioning almost as a voiceover narrator), or the visit to the Breton village to see a local festival that blesses the sea (which, again, an older Cornish character ‘explains’ to the other characters, and the audience).

Throughout, the work of editor Michael Truman and assistant editor Barbara Bennett is particularly strong, and the link to the montage tradition of the British documentary movement is evident in many sequences (again, the pulling in of the fish, and the sharp cuts between grimacing faces, hands tightening, fish flopping in the net; or the final mine scene, cutting between ship, nets, mine and onlookers, to create a tense sequence in an otherwise slow-paced film).

With strong supporting work among the different villagers and French fishermen, and a series of strong cinematography both on the boats (some scenes make use of back projection, but most are filmed on the water) and along the coastline, the film may be slow-moving in places, but is, overall, an enjoyable little film with a strong central message about working, and cooperating, with European neighbours: from the ‘English and French were never meant to mix’ to two villages becoming one.

Next time, sticking with the war theme, we join up with the Ships With Wings (1941)...

The Great Ealing Film Challenge 31: Lease of Life (1954)

I’ve been excited about watching this film for months now, even before I started this 95-film challenge: it’s one of Ealing’s thirteen colour films (an area of the studio’s production strategy I find endlessly fascinating), it’s photographed by Douglas Slocombe (one of British cinema’s finest cinematographers), it’s Robert Donat’s only Ealing appearance (and his penultimate film), and it’s filmed in the East Riding of Yorkshire, an area that rarely appears in British films. Yet my response on viewing the film was slightly deflated, and I find myself unsure whether that is because I built the film up in advance or if there is some more intrinsic problem with the film.

So, what works? Well, the Eastman Colour cinematography is striking in places, with big blue skies and Adrienne Corri’s auburn hair (and colourful outfits) bursting off screen in various places (there are other, more subtle colour touches here, as well, like the red hymnbook a schoolboy conceals his copy of Alias the Saint in) – but the film lacks the strong colour palette and experimentation with colour composition that can be found in Saraband for Dead Lovers (1948) and The Ladykillers (1955) or the thematic use of colour in The Titfield Thunderbolt (1953). While Corri’s colourful hair and clothing mark her out from the otherwise grey and pastel tones of her family (and thus support the film’s argument that she needs to leave home behind), it does not seem to resonate with the story as significantly here as in earlier Ealing colour films. Donat is solid throughout, and excels in those scenes where his character rediscovers his zest for life, and moves away from the rather humdrum, small, life he had lead up to that point. And the location filming is, again, one of the film’s strengths, selling the small village community of Halton (shot in Lund) and the larger cathedral town of Gilchester (filmed in Beverly).

Yet, despite those elements, the central narrative never feels coherent, suggesting (but never following through on) what the film could be: an exploration of how a man of faith responds to his impending death, and what changes he could make to his life and relationships. The film starts down this track – Donat plays Reverend William Thorne, a small, quiet man in a small parish church, whose life seems set in certain patterns, routines and habits. His wife Vera (Kay Walsh) has accepted this life, but wants more for their talented pianist daughter, Susan (Adrienne Corri). Like Pink String and Sealing Wax (1945) before it, there is a parallel subplot about Susan’s application to a London music school – and the costs that will come with it – but that tends to distract from the Donat plot rather than supplement it (and leads to a ludicrous plot development around theft that I will discuss more below).

When Donat discovers he is dying, he takes the news well, his small man persona more interested in how the doctor feels about giving such news, rather than how he should accept it. Yet over the next few scenes Donat shows this small, contained character changing, tearing up a safe sermon and offering a controversial speech instead (causing him to lose a well-paid job as school chaplain), chastising one parishioner when she complains about the local gravedigger smelling of drink (Donat’s response is that having the occasional drink to make you happy isn’t a bad thing, particularly if you bury bodies all day), and accepting responsibility for a dying man’s money (in order to prevent his younger wife getting her hands on it). The film’s strongest moments are when these scenes are at the centre of the narrative, a story of a religious man addressing his life, and his achievements: or, as Thorne says, ‘the important thing is not just to be good, but to be good human beings.’

And the film does pursue this, offering up a critique of newspaper misreporting and desire to drum up salacious content – while Thorne insists ‘No one takes this sort of newspaper seriously’ the headline (‘Vicar tears up speech! Questions afterlife’) is enough to draw larger crowds to his sermons and is, by a roundabout route, also the solution to the financial problems that clutter up the final half of the film. But it is that narrative move towards money issues where the film stumbles: despite Susan winning a scholarship, it is clear the Thorne’s do not have enough money to support her. So, the film casts a complicated web involving Thorne as executor of Mr Sproatley’s farm estate and will. While some of this plot works (the performance of Vida Hope as Mrs Sproatley, the younger wife, and her twin desires - for her husband’s death and a young farmhand - is delightful) the film veers away from Thorne to Vera, and her sudden decision to take £100 from the Sproatley hoard to fund Susan’s future.

While it is always interesting to see Ealing push female roles beyond simple concepts like housewife and talented daughter, it is unclear why the character of Vera would suddenly change her behaviour in this way. From a declaration that she was following Thorne’s sermon, to Thorne’s accusation that she is obsessed with living vicariously through Susan, to the revelation of Thorne’s illness (something he kept hidden for everyone), and his equally sudden acceptance of money from the newspapers (to cover the money Vera stole), the film’s denouement departs from what made the film stand out in its earlier scenes. This, along with other smaller subplots (notably a relationship between Susan and the cathedral’s organist (and music teacher) Martin (Denholm Elliot) that appears to be based on him being stern and telling her off), means the film takes its eye off Donat’s performance of a decent man suddenly unshackled from life’s concerns, and able to act in a freer, honest, fashion.

A flawed film, then, but no less fascinating for it: as noted, Donat gives a strong performance, although his personal illness is written in Thorne’s lined and weary face, and Kay Walsh and Adrienne Corri give strong support (given underwritten roles). The strengths of the film remain its occasional burst of colour composition (the strong blue under the film’s titles, the close-ups of blue and green-tinged stained glass windows as sun streams through them), the location filming, a subtle sense of humour (the schoolboy hiding the Saint book; a reference to a parishioner who couldn’t get into The 39 Steps (1935), Donat’s early Hitchcock appearance), and sly scene-stealing moments from actors like Vida Hope and Denholm Elliot.

 

[UPDATED April 2014: Lease of Life is now available as part of The Ealing Studios Rarities Collection, Volume 11, from Network]

 

Next time, we start 2012 by going back to the war years in Johnny Frenchman (1945)...

The Great Ealing Film Challenge 30: Return to Yesterday (1940)

A minor entry in the Ealing canon (still technically a CAPAD production), this feels like one of the transitional films that was produced as Michael Balcon (and others) figured out what kind of films Ealing Studios (as a production company) should, and could, produce. Like The Gaunt Stranger (1938), Trouble Brewing (1939) and Saloon Bar (1940), it is mostly studio-based with a few brief location shots of the pier and a remote island, but unlike the latter two films, the plot is rarely strong enough to hold the attention.

Based on a stage play (‘Goodness How Sad,’ by Robert Morley) this is a largely unconvincing and thin slice of romantic drama that features a few interesting character performances, but is dominated by three largely unappealing leads. Despite opening on a young couple (playwright Peter (David Tree) and his girlfriend / actress Carol (Anna Lee) and the play they are about to open at the Pier Theatre, the film is more focused on the nostalgic (and initially incognito) journey of Robert Maine (Clive Brook), a Hollywood star, back to his roots.

What follows is strictly by the numbers: the play’s leading man drops out, Maine (in disguise as ‘Manning’) is convinced to take the role, the producer pulls the funding, the cast decide to put it on themselves, Maine is revealed, and he and Carol fall in love. The play gets a huge opening night, and publicity, and Maine leaves Carol behind, after realising her life is just beginning. While none of this is badly presented, the execution lacks any life or passion: there is no visual flair, the comedy is forced (Captain Angst (Ludwig Stossel), an eccentric Germanic professor type at the lodging house keeps a seal in a bathtub), and the performers appear to be going through the motions (ironic, in a film about doing exactly the opposite and being passionate about the play you are in).

Clive Brook is solid, but the film doesn’t give him much to do – and there is little he can do to sell the frankly ludicrous love story between Maine and Carol. Even though the age difference between the characters is a story point, Brook cannot help but look like a leering older man next to Anna Lee, who bounces through the film like a teenager who’s had too much sugar. If it is important that he look old enough to be her father, it is perhaps unfortunate that he acts like that around her too, and never like a potential lover. Anna Lee is stronger bouncing off Tree, suggesting Carol’s passion and optimism, but that may say more about his acting than hers. (she does have a great line about everyone assuming the – platonic – evening spent with Maine alone on an island was some kind of orgy – not a very Ealing word!)

The supporting players are amusing, and offer hints of the ensemble playing that later Ealing films would become known for: the other actors in the play, notably Mrs Truscott (Dame May Whitty), are strong, while Grace and Sambourne provide some comic villainy and pomposity that gives the film some (partial) bite. Yet, ultimately, there is little to recommend here: a thin and unbelievable plot, solid acting and no real visual or aural flair to lift it higher in Ealing’s filmography.

[UPDATED April 2014: Return to Yesterday is now available as part of The Ealing Studios Rarities Collection, Volume 11, from Network]

Next time, Robert Donat faces the grim reaper in the East Riding of Yorkshire, in Lease of Life (1954)...

The Great Ealing Film Challenge 29: They Came to a City (1944)

Twenty-nine films in, and this is the first film I’ve watched with an audience. A small audience, admittedly: Mark Duguid (from the British Film Institute), and Justin Webb and Caroline (both from Radio 4’s Today Programme). As one of the more obscure Ealing films, it is only available (as far as I could ascertain) via the print held at the National Film and Television Archive. While Mark, Justin and I’s discussion on the film played on Radio 4 this morning (Monday 19th December), the following is a more detailed and expansive look at the film.

They Came to a City is a film that works better as a polemic than a piece of psychologically rich drama; a pitch for a post-Second World War utopian society that could learn from the mistakes of the past and prepare for a (possibly socialist) future. Yet, watching it nearly 70 years after it was produced, there are potent links with the society we live in now (one that has, arguably, abandoned or reduced many socialist-leaning creations of the 1940s), particularly the film’s inherent suspicion of banking and financial institutions. It is also, most curiously for Ealing (in fact, for any mainstream film of the time), a piece of meta-theatre, a commentary on both filmmaking and storytelling that invokes the figure of an author, and the ways in which stories are constructed and told. And it is a fantasy, part of a moment in Ealing history where realism was not the style du jour (and, as such, an interesting companion piece to Dead of Night (1945) and The Halfway House (1944)

But that’s getting ahead of myself. The plot is simple: nine strangers (including a married couple, although they are almost strangers to each other) are mysteriously taken from their everyday lives (a nice effect where they walk ‘into’ darkness and disappear as a gong sounds) and arrive in a misty, twisted forest. Making their way through it to a strange structure (part-castle, part-gateway), they debate their location and the strange city they can see below. After being admitted to the city, they regroup and discuss what they saw, with some disgusted at this new society, others breathless with excitement at the possibility of this new start. Some opt to stay, others to leave, others to return and spread the word of what humanity is capable of if they work together.

In many ways, however, the (thin) plot is the least of the film’s interests. It is a piece of narrative manoeuvring that gets the right character pieces into place for a series of debates and arguments. (it feels appropriate that one of the main locations, a square in front of the massive doorway into the city has a chequered floor like a chess board: the characters resemble pieces that are moved around as part of a bigger game) The characters range from working to upper class, although the film’s interests lie most with rough-and-ready Joe Dinmore (John Clements, who we are introduced to in a gym brawl) and the bittersweet barmaid/waitress Alice (Googie Withers). They form a relationship by the end of the film, pulled together by shared political beliefs, the knowledge that life could – and should – be better, and a desire to move beyond their inherent pessimism (Joe describes himself early on as a revolutionary who doesn’t believe in the revolution).

The characters are broadly but nicely drawn, although certain types lapse into broad cliché: Alice and Joe have rough edges, prone to sniping and disagreement even while falling in love; Mr and Mrs Stritton (Raymond Huntley and Renee Gadd) are a study in unhappy married life, but Mr Stritton reveals a hitherto unseen socialist streak and Mrs Stritton (although she hates the city and would gladly burn it down) admits some of her failings by the end; while Ma / Mrs Barley (Ada Reeve) is an old tired woman who comes alive when she sees the beauty of the city. The broadest stereotypes are the upper class and aristocracy: Sir George Gedney (A. E. Matthews) is an oafish cliché who’d rather be shooting something than be around people; Lady Loxfield (Mabel Terry-Lewis) is an interfering harridan who controls her daughter Philippa (Francis Rowe) to such an extent that she drives her away, into the arms of the city; finally, businessman Mr Cudworth (Norman Shelley) is a fussy, whining sort, who embodies all that is wrong with out-for-number-one capitalism, and whose only interest in the city is if he can exploit it for personal gain.

So, if the narrative isn’t the strongest, and the characters are often types rather than fully-realised, then why would I want to argue that the film still works, and resonates today?

Partly, that is because the film is endlessly fascinating: it is hard to imagine any successful studio in modern times ‘green-lighting’ a film (even one that is an adaptation of a successful play) that is so anti-capitalist and pro-socialism. Obviously the late Second World War-context comes into play – that was a moment where it was felt the world could change, could become a better, fairer place for all – and indeed that period led to many positive changes in British society that are still partially visible today. But it is still unusual to see a film that is so politicised, from a studio that is always claimed to be cosy and safe: things this film most definitely is not.

But the film also looks interesting: some of the aesthetic choices don’t work (a series of quickly-cut close-ups of each actor when something dramatic or mysterious occurs becomes increasingly amusing with each new version), but many of them remain impressive. There is grand set design by Michael Relph, particularly on what looks like a low budget: the use of matte paintings and models to give a sense of scale in some of the effects shots (Ealing’s effects team are unsung heroes in many of the films I’ve viewed to date), but also the scale of the sets that are constructed. These sets go a long way to selling the fantasy of the film: particularly the strange central location that looks like a combination of castle, Mayan pyramid, and shifting modernist labyrinth. Those sets are, quite literally, like nothing else I’ve seen in British cinema in this period: completely different to the futures imagined in earlier fantastic films like High Treason (1929) or Things to Come (1936), and unsettling in its splintering of different architectural styles. As mentioned above, these aspects of set design also colour aspects of the narrative: not just the chess board motif, but the way the sets create vertical space rather than (the more normal) horizontal – characters are constantly moving up and down in this new world, climbing vast staircases, passing through toweringly tall doorways, looking down vertiginous walls. It could be argued that as well as adding fantasy and mystery, such vertical movement also challenges the engrained upper-middle-lower class debates going on in the dialogue.

[there is a great quote on Screen Online from a BECTU interview with Sidney Cole, co-writer on the film with director Basil Dearden, who notes that playwright J.B. Priestly saw the film with only the music track and declared it so much better without the dialogue – which is, frankly, declamatory and overwrought throughout)

All of which doesn’t seem to sit well with critics of Ealing’s work: Charles Barr sees it as a ‘dismal experience... arid, abstract, statuesquely posed and declaimed... it cannot make the leap into showing, or summoning up, the dream city... [the studio] needs to base itself on what is known and familiar.’ (Barr 1980, 52-3)

While, at the end of the day, it may simply not be to your tastes (if you can even get to see it) there is no doubt the film is a potent source of debate and surprise: not least that Ealing made it in the first place. But Barr’s assessment ignores how the film uses the lack of the central city – an absence that is commented on in the film, in a moment that feels both modern and Brechtian. The film is not only bookended by a sequence in our ‘reality’, where a picnicking soldier and his Wren girlfriend debate the future with a passing J.B. Priestly (a fantasy on par with much in the actual fantasy world), but the film returns to this trio in the middle, just as the characters enter the utopian city. In a moment of authorial glee, Priestly and the two picnickers debate whether the film should show the city, or if it is better not to see it. This film-within-a-film moment feels very knowing, a wink to the audience who are expecting to be shown this utopian space, but also a return to the idea of character, and how the story is actually about their reactions to the city, not what the city looks like. To underline this sense of authorial comment and amusement, the final words of the film belong to Priestly who, wandering down a country lane towards the horizon, says to the couple (and the cinema audience) ‘Thanks for listening.’

This may be a polemic, it may lack depth and subtlety, but it remains one of Ealing’s most fascinating films and is a strong example of the kind of thing I hoped to find on this challenge – something different, and something that has forced me to rethink my opinion of this supposedly restrained and realistic British studio.

Next time, the 30th film in the Challenge likes to be beside the seaside, in Return to Yesterday (1940)...

The Great Ealing Film Challenge 28: West of Zanzibar (1954)

If Where No Vultures Fly (1951) was an attempt to combine documentary, travelogue, action-adventure and colour filmmaking, then West of Zanzibar slims that concoction down by losing most of the documentary approach and focusing on the colonial action-adventure, personified here by stalwart hero Bob Payton (again played by Anthony Steel). The change in emphasis can also be seen in the accompanying poster, with its pirate ships and action scenes.

Like many sequels, this provides audiences with known pleasures – shots of elephants, giraffe, warthogs, rhino and impala – and expanded ones – mainly images of crocodiles and birds; where Payton largely ruled his small fiefdom in the first film, here he is striking out to the Kenyan port of Mombasa and to the island of Zanzibar; rather than simply the adventurous do-gooder, here Payton is an unlikely detective and adventurer taking on gangsters as well as poachers; and, if the first film largely dramatised white issues, the sequel is a more direct attempt to give the black African characters a voice, a perspective, and a range of psychologised characters and roles within the story. Yet the price for this latter development is the more stereotypical role played by the largely villainous Arab sailors and traders who exploit the African tribes.

The film’s shift from the savannahs of the Kenyan game reserve to wider concerns is evident from the opening images of old-fashioned dhows slicing through the deep blue waves of the sea. Over this, a voiceover talks about the dhows of Arabia, the trade routes, the ‘black gold’ of slavery and the ‘white gold’ of ivory that many such ships engage with. At this stage, the feel remains documentary, but that shifts to a more dramatic mode as the action moves to the Galanas tribe who are voting on where to move their village – the safety of the hills or the ‘civilisation’ offered along the coast. Payton is here, advising tribal chief Ushingo (Edric Connor) to (quite literally) head for the hills: but the younger generation, including Ushingo’s sons Bethlehem (Bethlehem Sketch) and Ambrose (David Osielti), are drawn by the opportunities in Mombasa. Ushingo is the only person to vote for the hills.

Five minutes into the film, then, it is clear that West of Zanzibar has a different view on its black characters: there are a range of individuals, they are identified by name, and there is an attempt to draw the audience in to their problems. Payton remains the voice of moral certainty, however: when he speaks against Mombasa, it is clear the tribe has made the wrong choice. But when Payton goes back to the game reserve, the camera stays with the tribe, showing us hut building and food preparation in their new coastal setting, and the problems of selling food at the local markets. Before you know it, several young hunters (including Ushingo’s sons) have met Arab men (signalled by bright red fezzes), been lured in by the dangers of consumerism (and thus, away from their traditions), and are back in the reserve, hunting elephants for ivory. Ushingo tells Payton his people have contracted a ‘sickness’ (desire for money and goods) are ‘simple in the ways of the towns’ and ‘starve in the slums’ – he also challenges Payton’s attempts to help, noting ‘It is always an African who pays... when we yield to temptation, we are always savages.’ This representation of a non-white voice also offers at least a partial challenge to the pro-white civilisation suggested by Payton in the earlier film.

Like Mannering in Where No Vultures Fly, there is a central character whose official public persona masks a villainous ivory smuggler: lawyer Dhofar (Martin Benson) protects the interests of the dhow captain accused of ivory smuggling by Payton, and educates the Payton’s in ‘real world’ politics, accusing them of being no better than missionaries, and comparing the plight of African tribes in slums to the British working classes during the Industrial Revolution. While an educated man, Dhofar’ intelligence (like Mannering’s before him) is no match for Payton’s moral certainty and action-hero credentials: a swift punch to the jaw is Payton’s ultimate riposte to the mannered Arab lawyer.

Payton’s attempts to help Ushingo are aided by his wife Mary (played here by Sheila Sim) and M’Kwongi (Orlando Martins), and include haphazard investigations around Zanzibar, boat chases across the ocean, and gathering help from the Kenyan tribes to track and attack the ivory-smuggling dhow (which, conveniently, has Dhofar on board). Despite the presence here of debates around the future of Africa, tribal issues and at least a hint of the African perspective, this is action-adventure to the core, where problems are solved by a no-nonsense white man, who regularly strips to the waist, gets into scrapes, inspires loyalty from all who work with him, and always gets his man. Steel plays this like a nascent British Indiana Jones, all gung-ho spirit and lantern-jawed heroics, a fantasy of white intervention amid the film’s interests in the African experience.

Like Where No Vultures Fly, the film makes strong use of its colour cinematography, although arguably the main fantasy here is the change seen in Mary Payton. As played by Sheila Sim, she is a glamorous figure, always in a different (and colourful) outfit, and normally in full make-up (a departure from the hardy, bush-living version of the character established by Dinah Sheridan). Here, Mary appears in bottle green dresses, pink and white polka dots, scarlet red blouse, always smart and stylish, even when pursuing her husband across the plains. Sim is not the only colourful element here: like its predecessor, the film knows how to foreground strong colour images – not simply the red and orange tribal outfits, but strong blue-greens in the ocean-going scenes (and some underwater photography), and the bright red sail on the boat Payton commandeers during his dhow-chasing adventure.

The film ends by playing to its strengths: back in the game reserve, with familiar wildlife images (some of which are recycled from Where No Vultures Fly, but most appear new), as Payton and his tribal friends successfully attack the dhow, capture the ivory smugglers and reaffirm Payton’s paternal role to the Galanas (particularly with Ushingo dying during the attack) – as Bethlehem, the new chief notes, Payton was right that the tribe needed to learn to walk before they ran, and that everyone in this big country must learn to live in peace. Payton nods, and sums up the film’s ultimate moral: patience and tolerance is the only way forward for Africa (and, by extension, the world). Despite Ushingo’s earlier complaint that the white man always tells the black ‘where to live, and where not to live, what to think and what not to think,’ the film ends with just that division.

Still, with its strong location filming, exciting narrative pace, and the amusement value of Steel’s (dramatically increased) gung-ho performance, there is a lot to enjoy about West of Zanzibar.

[UPDATED April 2014: West of Zanzibar is now available as part of The Ealing Studios Rarities Collection, Volume 1, from Network]

Next time, the Great Ealing Film Challenges takes to the airwaves to discuss They Came to a City (1944)...