The Great Ealing Film Challenge 61: The Ladykillers (1955)

Watching this again, I couldn’t help wondering: is The Ladykillers Ealing’s most famous film? In academic circles, it is probably one of the most cited – with debates ranging over what aspect of British society it is satirising, what larger contemporary issues it might be addressing, or simply hailing the directorial work of Alexander Mackendrick – and, in popular circles, it ranks alongside the other Alec Guinness comedies Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), The Lavender Hill Mob (1951) and The Man in the White Suit (1951) and Ealing dramas The Blue Lamp (1950) and The Cruel Sea (1953). In the last decade, a case for The Ladykillers as the most well known Ealing film has only increased, with the unfortunate Tom Hanks-Coen Brothers remake in 2004 and the recent theatrical adaptation by Graham Linehan. At some level, it may be that this simple tale of five crooks and the little old lady who is unwittingly drawn into their robbery, is what people think of when it comes to Ealing Studios.

As a film, The Ladykillers confirms and challenges much of the ‘Ealing-esque’ character identified in several of these blog posts: conformity and community are here, black comedy is woven throughout, ensemble cast performance is crucial, location filming is crucial to the setting and narrative and there is a moral dimension to the denouement. Yet, again in common with some of the Ealing films, it can also be frustratingly abrupt and incoherent: Professor Marcus’ (Alec Guinness) descent into madness is signposted at several occasions, but his abrupt switch from controlled venom to outright homicide in the final moments can feel contrived; while the different performance styles do threaten to undermine the film (not least Frankie Howerd’s barrow boy, a moment that feels badly improvised, incoherent and overplayed by director and cast).

That the film still works is, in part, due to that collision of styles and ideas: Guinness’ gothic and twisted (mentally and physically) Professor may be the most mannered performance, but it works because it bounces off solid work from the rest of the gang of crooks: Claude / Major Courtney (Cecil Parker), Harry / Mr Robinson (Peter Sellers) and One Round / Mr Lawson (Danny Green). The fifth member, Louis / Mr Harvey (Herbert Lom), is different again: not full of twitchy movement and vocal tricks like Guinness, but an affectionate homage to American gangster types, stiff and unyielding, sardonic and aloof, always with one eye on the money and the door. And set against them all is Mrs Wilberforce (Katie Johnson), fussy and dotty and not remotely endearing, remnant of a lost age in so many ways (her house, adrift at the end of the street; her memories of Queen Victoria dying; her belief in what’s morally right). The collision of these six performances and these six characters – and arguably, the seventh, the lopsided house they inhabit for much of the film – coheres even when individual moments feel uncertain.

It also doesn’t hurt that the film looks fantastic, with Mackendrick and director of photography Otto Heller creating an off-kilter world that is one step removed from our own. The film plays with colour, offering garish purple-blues colours when Guinness first appears (and then, later, in the night-time scenes as the gang plan to kill Mrs W), and emphasising communication technologies of phone boxes and trains with splashes of red. This is a world similar to our own, but separate – much like Mrs Wilberforce herself. Barr describes the film as containing a small village atmosphere, but that village arguably owes as much to horror traditions as it does to Ealing community, with the Wilberforce house a misshapen castle out of time and out of place at the end of its long narrow cul-de-sac, a potential monstrous location best avoided. Although she may think she is, Mrs Wilberforce is never at the centre of this community – the film depicts her as much of an intruder into these social spaces as the gang, distracting the police (who are politely dismissive of everything she says, with Jack Warner notably playing up to – and satirising – his reliable police presence as the superintendent who ushers her quickly back out into the street) and causing chaos in the streets. Mrs W may be the closest the film comes to a moral centre, but the film encourages audiences to see that morality as skewed and uncertain as the gang’s criminal perspective.

Despite all this playful and blackly comic misdirection, The Ladykillers still works as a broader comedy: the film never misses an opportunity to stress their childish behaviour (fighting and climbing over each other to get into a phone box) and the slapstick of the gang’s inept failure to capture a parrot presages their incompetence when it comes to killing Mrs W. Performances capture small comic touches that bring the characters to life: Lom handling his violin case like it contains a machine gun (and holding his violin like he’s about to clobber someone with it); Guinness’ impatient tug at his scarf every time Mrs W treads on it; Sellers’ unhappy expression when faced with killing Mrs W; Green hopping around the room, legs wedged in a broken chair; Parker, bouncing off the walls of a phone box as Mrs W seems set to undermine their plans. Different comic styles, modes of performance, and narrative elements all collide in The Ladykillers and, often despite themselves, create a film that remains compelling and enjoyable.

[The Ladykillers is released on DVD by Studio Canal. See www.studiocanal.co.uk for more details]

Next time, we head back to Australia for Ealing's final film, The Siege of Pinchgut (1959)...

The Great Ealing Film Challenge 60: The Proud Valley (1940)

The Proud Valley seems to be a film that is required to stand for a lot of different opinions, historical developments, and ideologies: perhaps understandably, given this is an Ealing film with black American actor Paul Robeson in the lead role, about a mining village’s attempt to self-govern their own mine, a plan which (both in terms of the film’s fiction and the film’s production) changes due to the advent of the Second World War. It is easy to discuss the film in terms of key themes – notably the power of community, or the need for national (British) unity in wartime – but I wonder if that dilutes the film's ability to question such easy ideas. 

Pen Tennyson’s second film for the studio, The Proud Valley is seen as a key film in Ealing’s move towards ‘projecting Britain’, something that (as the blog has explored) is key to the identity of the studio during wartime and beyond. Tennyson, often seen as one of the studio’s ‘might have beens’ (he died in a plane crash while in service), is also credited with introducing non-professional actors and more authentic accents to working class depictions at Ealing. Certainly, one of the strengths of the film is its depiction of the village around the Blaendy pit, into which outsider and itinerant ship’s hand David Goliath (Paul Robeson), arrives. At least in part because of David’s amazing singing voice – the pit has a male voice choir about to compete at the Eisteddfod – foreman and choir conductor Dick Parry (Edward Chapman) gets him a job down the pit. 

Barr and Perry’s accounts of the film are, understandably, interested in the later developments of the story: an accident at the pit claims Parry’s life, the pit is closed, the village struggles to survive, Parry’s son Emlyn (Simon Lack) organises a march to London with a plan to reopen it, war is declared and they are given the chance to reopen Blaendy. The focus on the relationship between capital/bosses and labour/workers – combined with the fact the original script originally ended with the mine run as a miner-owned collective – tends to privilege this reading, but it works from the idea that the village is consistently presented as a coherent community. In fact, one of the strengths of the film is its ability to undercut simple ideas around ‘them’ and ‘us’, around the image of two different maternal figures, Mrs Owen (Dilys Davies) and Mrs Parry (Rachel Thomas). 

Mrs Owen is the local shopkeeper and postmistress, ostensibly a central figure in the community. Mrs Parry is a housewife, married to Dick, mother to Emlyn and four other children. They are linked through their children: Emlyn and Gwen (Janet Johnson) are in love and, with Emyln training to be a pit manager, planning to be married. It is clear Mrs O believes herself superior to others in the village – she doesn’t like dirty mine workers in her shop, can’t stand the Parry’s children’s swearing, she steams open people’s post to keep ahead of the news – yet when the pit closes, she is also flexible with payment and gives products on tick to the locals. This uncertain balance ends with an outburst at the Parry’s house, where Mrs O notes she owns her own shop, has money in the bank, and accuses Emlyn of being ‘a boy on the dole without a penny to his name’ saying Gwen won’t be dragged down by him and the ‘poverty-riven hole’ they live in. While Gwen chooses Emlyn, and his plan to reopen the pit, over her mother’s plans, Mrs Owen remains a problematic figure within the film: are we supposed to read her as too capitalist for this communistic narrative? She disappears shortly after this, seemingly absent from the community that joins together – visually and in song – at the end of the film (a community that, crucially, Mrs Parry, is a central part of), but her presence cannot be denied. 

Yet all this talk of competing maternal figures runs the risk of ignoring the film’s star, and its central masculine figure: Paul Robeson. From the moment he strolls onto screen, snatching a ride in a train wagon, belting out songs in rich bass tones (‘like thunder from a distance’), and mining coal stripped to the waist, it is clear that Robeson is the centre of this film. True, the film aims for an ensemble feel, but Robeson (a tall, handsome black man with an amazing voice) stands out visually and aurally in every scene. It is a casual performance, open and confident; never trying to steal a scene, but walking away with it nevertheless. Perhaps the main problem is that his character has little to do in the film, and ends up as little more than a magical figure that wanders in, revitalises the village and encourages Dick and Emlyn to pursue their dreams. He is brave, kind, strong, moral... but there is no sense of why he does anything he does in the film, not least the final self-sacrifice he makes to save a group of trapped miners. Given the film ends with Robeson’s voice on the soundtrack as the film tracks over images of an idyllic Welsh landscape to a perfect sky overhead, is it too much to see him less as a magician, and more as a heavenly visitor, a precursor to Clarence in It’s A Wonderful Life (1946)? 

The Proud Valley remains a fascinating, often contradictory film, but is worth watching for the performance of Robeson and the narrative’s ability to draw you into its small village atmosphere.

[The Proud Valley is released on DVD by Studio Canal. See www.studiocanal.co.uk for more details]

Next time, we call in at Mrs Wilberforce's to meet up with The Ladykillers (1955)...

The Great Ealing Film Challenge 59: For Those in Peril (1944)

For Those in Peril is a perfect example of the story-documentary approach begun in the British documentary groups, and developed through Ealing projects such as San Demetrio, London (1943) or Convoy (1940). Here, the film uses strong documentary filming techniques around life at port and on Air-Sea Rescue launch 183, and balances that with character-based work that explores the relationship between Flight Lt. Murray (David Farrar) and new officer Rawlings (Ralph Michael), who is vocal in his dislike of his new role in the Air-Sea Rescue unit (Rawlings believes he should be flying planes for the air force, making a ‘real’ difference rather than messing around in boats).

In the first half of the film, we see Murray and his men working and playing together, setting up a cohesive team – and one that is less tradition-based, less stuffy about the kind of pomp they see in their Navy colleagues (although this quickly becomes togetherness and ‘good old navy’ when they need help from the bigger ships). So, the crew of launch 183 play snooker and darts, sing on board the boat, eat sandwiches, joke about different ways to cook spam, and drink tea together, all under the watchful eye of a stern but amused Murray. Rawlings is a tense and cynical addition for much of the film, learning the ropes but unhappy with his lot. When the launch is caught in a firefight with a German ship and aircraft, Murray is killed, and it is up to Rawlings to take charge of this team and prove himself.

The story, then, is another exercise in male camaraderie and teamwork, largely based around officers, but also drawing in the lower decks through characters like Wilkes (John Slater) and Griffiths (Robert Griffith). The film’s style is a curious mix of verisimilitude (featuring a lot of filming on real ships and launches, combining Slocombe’s documentary heritage with the participation of the Admiralty and Navy in filming), solid performances from Farrar and Michael, and occasionally jarring process work placing those actors against violent sea-faring backdrops. When the film works – such as tense sequences where a rescue plane touches down in a minefield, or where the launch tries to manoeuvre out of the same minefield – it is compelling; but the battle with the German ship is less convincing, and the effects work on some of the aerial dogfights is more jarring.

George Perry believed this was the closest Charles Crichton ever got to ‘documentary realism during his long Ealing career’ (76) but the film might be a stronger evocation of Douglas Slocombe’s cinematography than Crichton’s directorial touch. Slocombe had come to Ealing through wartime documentary experience, employed by the Ministry of Information to ‘shoot propaganda footage on destroyers and convoys’ – as Ealing produced many of those films, they gradually assimilated him into the studio, and he became a fully-fledged member of the main studio team by the end of the war. (Pavlus 2002, 90) Along with Cavalcanti, Slocombe was crucial in Ealing developing the blend of documentary footage and studio-produced drama that is on display here. As in San Demetrio, London, on which she was also credited, the dramatic pacing of the camerawork and editing is well supported by sound cutter/editor Mary Habberfield, one of Ealing’s unsung production heroes through the 1940s.

Perhaps the one uncertainty around this film – which is otherwise a solid and straightforward piece of drama-doc – is the abrupt way the film ends. While there is a disparity over length between IMDb (77 minutes) and the DVD release (64 minutes) there is no evidence of the film being edited or censored (unlike the The Goose Steps Out (1943), as discussed a few weeks ago). Instead, there are missed narrative opportunities to pursue Rawlings’ uncertainty over taking on Murray’s command, or even a brief exploration of how he deals with a crew more used to Murray’s leadership style. In place of this, the film cuts from Rawlings taking charge to him in a pub, several weeks later: a scene that mirrors an earlier one where Murray introduced Rawlings to the same pub. The message is clear: Rawlings has learned from Murray and can now comfortably replace him. There is no psychological need to explore how Rawlings learned this, or if he struggled: it is wartime, he is British, so it just happened. The propaganda message is clear: Britain fights on, in whatever job or form it can.

[For Those in Peril is released on DVD by Studio Canal. See www.studiocanal.co.uk for more details]

Next time, we head to Wales and enter The Proud Valley (1940)...

The Great Ealing Film Challenge 58: The Shiralee (1957)

The fourth in Ealing’s five Australian films, after The Overlanders (1946), Eureka Stockade (1949) and Bitter Springs (1950) – and the first produced by Ealing Films, with financial backing from MGM – this is an episodic film that struggles to effectively dramatise the life of ‘swagman’ Jim Macauley (Peter Finch), the woman and friends he has made (and lost) in his years on the road, and – centrally – how he copes when his independent, free life is challenged by the addition of his young daughter, Buster (Dana Wilson), his ‘shiralee’ (burden).

The film, like most of Ealing’s output, is never bad, features solid direction from Leslie Norman, and contains moments of strong performance from Finch: yet it is continually uncertain if it is celebrating the free spirit of the swagman and the rural communities and people it depicts, or if this is a criticism of that breed of man through the treatment and experience of this child. It seems important that Buster spends most of the film as an annoyance for Macauley, but at dramatically useful moments suffers from fever, or is unconscious after being knocked down by a truck. The film has been praised for not being mawkish or saccharine (although it actually drifts close to both), but that could largely be because Finch’s brash, base performance as Macauley dominates so much of the film there is little room for Wilson.

Macauley is curiously unmotivated throughout – again, a trait which can be read as criticism or valorisation – his aimless life moves him from farm to farm, itinerant job to itinerant job, fight to fight, town to town; his decision to take Buster on the road (after discovering his wife, Marge – Elizabeth Sellars, wasted in a thin role – having an affair) is a spur of the moment thing, but seems motivated by spite, and plot necessity. As the film progresses, we learn that Macauley has slept his way around Australia, and that Buster might not be the only product of that lifestyle – and the women he leaves behind, notably Marge and Lily (Rosemary Harris), are scarred by the encounter. The film’s moral perspective on this remains opaque: Macauley gets to keep custody of Buster through blackmail, not parental excellence; indeed, Buster ends up in hospital because Macauley was chatting up a shopgirl, having left his daughter in the company of a swagman they’d met five minutes before, despite his uncertain mental status; equally, Lily accepts Macauley back into her life, seemingly because Buster reminds her of the baby (Macauley’s) she lost, years ago. Macauley ‘wins’ in all of these encounters, coming out on top largely through inaction or the charitable actions of others – yet what are we supposed to make of him, or his life?

The only woman Macauley doesn’t seem to have tarnished is Bella Sweeney (Tessie O’Shea), but she is a traditional matronly/maternal figure, married to Luke (Sid James), and the only positive sign of heterosexual pairings throughout: yet these characters have only a slim role in the film, largely as comic relief, or as a sense of what ‘proper’ parenting might look like. Like the film itself, they seem to accept Macauley as he is, without comment or challenge.

Marge isn’t so lucky, as she becomes the film’s main representative of the city, the urban, as a contrast to Macauley’s rural freedom. Rural trumps urban every time here: it is violent (Macauley beats up Marge’s new man, Donny (George Rose), and later is beaten up by Donny’s friends), sexual (Marge sleeps with Donny because he knows how to treat a woman, Marge is pictured in form-fitting lingerie in the bulk of her screen appearances), deceitful (Marge’s infidelity, Donny’s desire to maintain proper public appearance), and complex (lawyers, child custody, and divorce proceedings). The association of Marge and the city is particularly problematic, as she – like the other women in Macauley’s life – is depicted as weak, needing men to control and guide her, a bitter shrew who shares many characteristics with Lily, but does not get the suggestive redemption of Lily’s, standing with Macauley in the hospital in the final scene, agreeing to help look after Buster.

These issues don’t stop the film being entertaining and suitably dramatic in places, Finch and Wilson are solid performers (although Sid James’ lighter touch is welcome, if brief), while (as in Ealing’s other Australian films) the landscapes sell the scope and scale of the country that Macauley and Buster meander through. But that episodic nature, and the lack of characterisation around why Macauley does what he does, means the film feels incomplete and unsure what it is trying to say about this man, and his life.

[My thanks to Studio Canal, www.studiocanal.co.uk, for making a screening copy available to me for this blog]

[UPDATED April 2014: The Shiralee is now available as part of The Ealing Studios Rarities Collection, Volume 5, from Network]

Next time, back to the war years in For Those in Peril (1946)...

The Great Ealing FIlm Challenge 57: The Lavender Hill Mob (1951)

When it comes to the well-known Ealing comedies, those 6 or 7 films that (for many people) define what ‘Ealing’ means within British film culture, it is difficult for me to pick a favourite. The Man in the White Suit (1951) has real bite to it, a pitch-black satire which shares some similarities with the earlier Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) and later The Ladykillers (1955); yet the wish-fulfilment of Passport to Pimlico (1949) is wonderfully performed and presented, and (as readers of the blog know) I do have a soft-spot for the film often described as the lesser of the comedies, The Titfield Thunderbolt (1953). Yet this film cannot be ignored, not least for its sheer pace, inventiveness and for the strength of Alec Guinness’ performance.

The story of Henry ‘Dutch’ Holland (Guinness), a minor bowler-hatted bank functionary among thousands of his ilk, and the fulfilment of his (long-held) desire to steal the gold bullion he shepherds from foundry to bank vault, is likely well known. Planning the heist with his artist friend Alfred Pendlebury (Stanley Holloway) and crooks Lackery Wood (Sid James) and Shorty Fisher (Alfie Bass), the film shows us how this small repressed man changes into a new character through his criminal endeavours. That the scheme – melting the stolen gold into Eiffel Tower models that can be transported to Paris – ultimately fails is immaterial to the film’s real interest in Holland’s blossoming.

As much a tour de force for Guinness as Kind Hearts (although less showy), there are key scenes – most notably when Holland arrives back at the bank with a spring in his step (having recruited crooks and put plans in place), only to visibly shrink and deflate back to his ‘work’ persona when called into see his boss. Equally, the moment where Holland realises he is in charge of this gang, or where he sees the trust that Lackery and Shorty have placed in him, confirm Guinness’ ability to inscribe the character with nuanced gesture and expression.

The film also contains many strong visual moments: Holland and Pendlebury running down the central stairway of the Eiffel Tower is well known (and a nice visual link to an earlier scene where Holland was made to spin on the spot to make it easier for Lackery to tie him up), but the film also contains strong location work (seemingly shot on the same streets around St Pauls and the City as Pool of London (1951), which was produced a few months earlier), a speedily-edited car chase montage (that harks back to Pool of London and 1950s The Blue Lamp), and a strong sequence where Lackery and Shorty are recruited into the gang in a shadowy warehouse (notably Shorty’s initial entrance, as a monstrous and misshapen shadow cast on the wall, then revealed to be the diminutive Alfie Bass). Equally, a single-shot sequence following Holland – hailed as a hero – from room to room in the bank, from Chief Cashier to the Chairman and Board of Directors, perfectly conveys Holland’s growing sense of himself but adds a nice satirical note that only in organising this robbery has he achieved this level of success at the institution he just robbed.

The film maintains a solid balance between its whimsy – Holloway plays Pendlebury as a scatter-brained Shakespeare-quoting twit, the laughing schoolgirls who inadvertently buy six of the mob’s Eiffel Towers – and its broader comic moments. Holland reads pulpy crime novel You’d Look Well in a Shroud to his landlady, Miss Evesham (Edie Martin); Lackery, stuck next to the safe he’s trying to break into, tucks into a sandwich; Holland has to mess up and rip his own clothes to establish his alibi after the robbery; French immigration and customs prevent Holland and Pendlebury from boarding a ship. These moments punctuate and inform the film’s strong and propulsive narrative, which only shows signs of flagging in Holland and Pendlebury’s pursuit of the final Eiffel Tower statue back in England and the slapstick chase through a police museum exhibition that ensues. This sequence works, but the move into broader comedy does pull the film away from the blacker and satiric edge the earlier scenes contained. It does, however, point up an underlying interest in technology – the large advert for Ekcovision Television behind Pendlebury as he waits for the heist to begin; the wireless radio police cars in the chase – and the potential misuse of such technology, given Holland’s ability to mislead the police using the radio.

At the end of the film, the contrast of the versions of Holland the film has presented to us becomes clear: pursued by the police, Holland is able to return to his persona as a ‘non-entity’ among thousands, losing himself among a crowd of other bowler-hatted city gents; as the film cuts to Holland in Rio (these sequences bookend the film), however, it is clear that his meek persona has been replaced by a confident and happy one (fuelled by money and status), even when he is being taken back to Britain in handcuffs (a lovely reveal, right at the end, as he and the policeman stand up from their table). If this film, as has been claimed, is a drama of wish-fulfilment, then Holland’s dream came true and (as we can see in that final scene) remains true even when captivity looms.

[The Lavender Hill Mob is released by Studio Canal on DVD and Blu-Ray, see www.studiocanal.co.uk for more details]

Next time, we head back 'down under' for Ealing Films' The Shiralee (1957)...

The Great Ealing Film Challenge 56: The Rainbow Jacket (1954)

Charles Barr bases his assessment on the final five years of Ealing production on one line at the end of this film, where Sam Lilly (Bill Owen) admits to Barbara Crain (Kay Walsh) that although his career as a jockey is washed up, he earned ‘just enough’ from betting on the last race ‘to buy a little old snack bar.’ To Barr, this strikes of Ealing’s conformist, middle-aged nature by the mid-1950s, producing films that privilege immovable institutions over the dynamism of youth. While I would dispute the narrative of stagnation that Barr suggests here – this blog has already seen that films like The Love Lottery (1954), The Ship that Died of Shame (1955), Touch and Go (1955) or Dunkirk (1958) offer some challenge to that idea – it is true that The Rainbow Jacket is not one of Ealing’s finest hours.

Created by established Ealing names (T.E.B. Clarke, Michael Relph, Basil Dearden – although with evidence that the latter two were not happy with the assignment), this is a slice of stereotypical sporting drama that paints characters in broad strokes, but, unlike the brisk pace of The Square Ring (1953), it suffers from a plodding pace; more carthorse than thoroughbred racehorse. Featuring some striking colour composition, and with an emphasis on extensive location filming at a series of racetracks, the film fails to come alive at any point.

When disgraced jockey Sam meets wannabe-jockey Georgie Crain (Fella Edmonds), he convinces Georgie’s mother, Barbara, to let him train the kid. After seeing Georgie control a wayward horse, Lord Logan (Robert Morley) gives him a job at his Newmarket stables, where Georgie works under trainer Geoffrey Tyler (Edward Underdown)  and the sadistic but good-humoured stables boss Tommy Adams (Herbert C. Walton). A natural jockey, Georgie’s meteoric rise and success helps brings Sam and Barbara together – but Sam’s shady past (fixing and betting on races) comes back to haunt them. Despite temporarily regaining his jockey licence, Sam sacrifices his career to save Georgie’s and plans a normal life with Barbara and that little old snack van.

Although slightly more complex than that description, the narrative trajectory remains clear: unlike The Square Ring, where Bill Owen positively bounced around the screen as cocky boxer Happy Burns, he is more restrained here, and the film appears uncertain if he should be punished or celebrated because of his past. Barr sees the film’s ending as a punishment, a curtailing (or reducing) of Sam’s future, resigning him to normal life with a wife and job. Yet reading the film in that way ignores Georgie’s story, which lies at the heart of the film – he is the character we spend most time with, we follow his path to success, see the uncertainty he goes through when learning the truth about Sam’s past. At the end of the film, Georgie is triumphant, winning the main St Leger Day race at Doncaster (and, replacing Sam, winning a second race – unseen, but covered by the racing commentary) and heading on to bigger and brighter things.

If Sam is the heart of the film, this is a tragedy of tradition over potential; if Georgie is at the heart, it is a triumphant story of individual genius, shaped by different people, but greater than all of them.

Unfortunately, whichever reading you choose to opt for, it doesn’t take away the fact that neither approach does much to enliven the bulk of the film. The performance of Fella Edmonds isn’t strong enough to carry the dramatic weight (the film appears aware of this, particularly in a scene where an older girl dances with – and towers over – him), Owen only shows flashes of his comic potential, and the supporting cast are largely anaemic – while poor Kay Walsh, soon to play the unhappy matriarch-turned-domestic crook of the Thorne family in Lease of Life (1954), has another brush with petty crime here, stealing money from her job to bet (unsuccessfully) on the horses. There is some comic relief from Robert Morley, but his brusquely idiotic Lord Logan largely blusters through most of his scenes; Sid James’ brief appearance as miserable snack bar owner Harry is too brief to make a difference; and even an early appearance by Honor Blackman (as Mrs Tyler) does little to lift the film’s spirits.

What, then, of the film itself? Like other films on this challenge, its status as one of Ealing’s thirteen colour films attracts my immediate attention, but – and this is becoming a cliché within this post – only at certain moments, largely reduced to accurately capturing the blue skies and green turf of different racecourses around England. There is a nice opening image under the film’s title – the red circle of the winning post offers a striking visual signifier of the subject matter – but after this, there are only suggestive hints (a red tablecloth and post box are used early on, but appear not to have any meaning other than verisimilitude). The strongest moment is a brief sequence inside the photography lab where photo-finish plates are produced. In this dark, shadowy space, lit only by first a green, then a red glow, the film takes on garish hues that sit uncomfortably with the naturalistic effect achieved elsewhere. It is not a surprise when the film cuts briskly away from that moment – and the only other strong colour imagery comes at the end, when we see the disgraced Sam, alone in the changing room, surrounded by the bright colours of discarded jockey uniforms. In the next (and final) scene, he is wrapped in a grey coat – perhaps offering more evidence for Barr’s notion that his future is closed down, reduced, no longer colourful.

[The Rainbow Jacket is released by Studio Canal, see www.studiocanal.co.uk for more details]

Next time, Alex Guinness' memorable performance as Henry Holland in The Lavender Hill Mob (1951)...

[edit: this replaces the previous information that For Those in Peril would be next: due to availability it will feature in early April instead)

The Great Ealing Film Challenge 55: Pool of London (1951)

Produced in the year after The Blue Lamp (1950), Pool of London shares similar thematic and narrative interests in criminal gangs (a jewellery heist in this case), car chases and delinquency. Although produced by the same team (Basil Dearden and Michael Relph), this film features little of the jovial camaraderie of P.C. Dixon and his colleagues, and feels more like the team’s effort to make a harder-edge crime drama, perhaps even influenced by some of the post-war American crime thrillers that were subsequently dubbed film noir. Yet despite some impressive stylistic touches, and an unusual setting, Pool of London is most noticeable for its attempt to blend together different issues and narrative ideas, leading to occasionally jarring shifts in tone and structure.

Dan MacDonald (Bonar Colleano) and Johnny Lambert (Earl Cameron) are shipmates on the Dunbar, a boat recently docked next to London’s Tower Bridge. Dan is the wide boy petty smuggler (nylons, cigarettes) while the more morally upright black sailor Johnny is his best friend; Dan has a girl in port (possibly every port), Maisie (Moira Lister), while Johnny tends to avoid the city, sure that beyond its gleaming surface it is ‘filth, squalor, misery.’ Yet on this trip he meets and begins a tentative relationship with Pat (Susan Shaw). Meanwhile, Dan agrees to smuggle stolen goods from London to Amsterdam for Vernon (Max Adrian) and Alf (Alfie Bass), and he and Johnny get caught between a murderous criminal heist and a Scotland Yard manhunt.

While that description doesn’t encapsulate the full range of tangential elements within the film, it already begins to point up the dense nature of what the film is attempting to combine. First, there is documentary footage of the London docks (according to Barr, the film arose out of a documentary project) butted up against several sequences of stylised chiaroscuro lighting; there is the dramatic material of the heist and murder next to the comic presence of Dunbar’s chief engineer (James Robertson Justice), who alternately drinks, sleeps, reads poetry, and yells at the crew; there is the sexual attitudes of the shipmates to their women compared to Johnny’s burgeoning relationship with Pat (largely developed by her); and there is the film’s attempt to comment on race relations through different characters assumptions and attitudes towards Johnny. Throw in Vernon’s acrobatic criminal, cat fights between Maisie and her sister Pamela (Joan Dowling), Dan sleeping with shipmate Harry’s girl Sally (Renee Asherson), and a series of fast-paced car chases, and the film is constantly on the verge of tipping over into incoherence.

There are points where it loses that sense of balance, and it is unclear what direction the film wants to head in: this is most clear in the desire to pursue the heist and Johnny and Pat’s day out in London at the same time. There is little direct relationship between the two storylines (the main element is that, while on St. Paul’s roof, Pat spots Vernon on the roof of a building nearby), but the film intercuts between them, as though trying to suggest some thematic connection that simply doesn’t arise. Even the music in these sequences is different: stronger, dramatic work over the heist and murder; lighter, romantic for Pat and Johnny. Both sequences work in their own right – Earl Cameron’s performance as Johnny is strong, presenting a man who has no real home and whose skin colour means most people will not accept him (rejecting Pat’s notion that it doesn’t matter how or where people are born, but equally thoughtful as to what colour God is); and the heist is expertly cut together (there is a great visual trick with an unclaimed bottle of milk that pays off through the scene) – but this is the point where the film most obviously feels most like two different stories that happen to share the same space.

Yet while that portmanteau quality works in Dead of Night (1945) or Train of Events (1949), here there is a sense that everything has to be connected – the diamonds from the heist are in the package Johnny agrees to take on the ship for Dan – but those links are never consistent beyond the level of narrative requirement. Equally, the race issues the film obviously wants to engage with – which form a solid bond with Dearden’s later film Sapphire (1957) – don’t lead anywhere, and tell us very little about the characters who indulge in such casual racism (such as Maisie, theatre guard, the police), or Johnny himself, the victim of it. Cameron and Colleano are called upon to do most of the dramatic heavy lifting throughout, and it is a shame to see Moira Lister (who was impressive in 1948s Another Shore) reduced to a shrill and mannered performance as working class Maisie.

What sticks in my mind after watching the film is its visual style: there are beautifully composed shots of the docks, mainly at night, well-shot shadowy streets and morally dubious characters (Maisie and Dan are often bathed in shadow, with bars of light across their face); the images of a deserted Sunday morning in the City of London (and the bombed out areas, a notable characteristic of Ealing films from Hue and Cry (1947) on) create a strong background for the heist, occurring in the shadow of St. Pauls; while the final atmospheric car chase through Rotherhithe tunnel is also a highlight, a set piece that feels almost Hitchcockian, as Vernon clambers (acrobatically) over a domed air vent and ends up falling from a pipe into the tunnel below. But ultimately, the film never feels as coherent or as powerful as the sum of its parts.

[Pool of London is released by Studio Canal, see www.studiocanal.co.uk for more details]

Next time, the sport of kings takes centre stage in The Rainbow Jacket (1954)...