The Great Ealing Film Challenge 68: The Maggie (1953)

Authors such as Geoffrey MacNab have talked about repeated themes in Scottish literature and cinema (and books/films set in Scotland) around the terms Tartanry and Kailyardism: tropes and ideas of Scotland as a land of myth and tartan-clad heroes, or a world where canny individuals regularly outwit newcomers with native ingenuity. These elements can be seen at work in films from Brigadoon (1953) and Braveheart (1992) to Whisky Galore! (1949) and Local Hero (1985). While such definitions might have been challenged with the recent expansion of Scottish films such as Trainspotting (1997) or Ratcatcher (2005), there remains an interest in films that engage with the mythic – Pixar’s Brave (2012) seems to draw from that well – and comedians and actors from Billy Connolly to Robert Carlyle regularly play off versions of the canny Scottish figure in film and television.

But what does this have to do with The Maggie? Well, the film foregrounds elements of Kailyardism (there is also a smattering of Tartanry in the opening titles, a kilt-wearing laird, and a Highland ceilidh) in this tale of a small and decrepit puffer boat, the Maggie, and her crew of misfits: the skipper, MacTaggart (Alex Mackenzie), first mate Hamish (James Copeland), engineer MacGregor (Abe Barker) and young lad Dougie (Tommy Kearins). MacTaggart is the wily Scot, an old dyed-in-the-wool chancer who, through misdirection and low cunning, convinces Englishman Pusey (Hubert Gregg) to let him take the cargo of American businessman Calvin B. Marshall (Paul Douglas) to the island of Kiltarra, where Marshall is building a home as a surprise for his wife. When he discovers what has happened, Marshall sets off in pursuit, trying to stop MacTaggart but eventually joining the crew and giving in to his inevitable defeat.

While there are, as Charles Barr has pointed out, similarities to both The Titfield Thunderbolt (1953) and Whisky Galore! (old form of transport winning out over new, traditional Scots win out over naive outsider), this film has a bitter and black comic centre that reduces any sympathy with either of the two male leads. Marshall is bluff and loud, throwing money at each problem rather than attempting to understand it; while MacTaggart is stubborn and mean, destroying property and livelihoods to get his own way. Mackendrick has stated that part of the ‘flavour of the joke’ was the ‘savagely unfair way in which [Marshall] is treated, the sly insult added to injury and the ultimate indignity of being made to feel that he is somehow “morally” in the wrong.’ (Alexander Mackendrick, quoted in Barr 1980, 167)

That idea of morality seems to come down to issues of money versus lifestyle: Marshall is rebuked by almost all the characters about his lifestyle and obsession with speed and efficiency. The ‘American way’ is ‘everything in a rush’ while the Scottish one (exemplified by the Maggie which, according to journalist Fraser (Andrew Keir) is ‘heartwarming’ and has a ‘touch of tradition’) is that things will get done, not quickly, but eventually. If the moral lesson about money and lifestyle remained unclear, one of the girls at the MacDougall party tells Marshall she doesn’t want a man who will have money and buy her everything, she’d rather have a poor fisherman who’ll always come home and wants to spend time with her. Yet the problem with this idea that Scottish cunning will triumph over American economic power, is that the film prevents us from rooting for MacTaggart. In making the other man so unlikeable, Mackendrick and writer William Rose paint themselves into a corner; when MacTaggart ‘wins’ (he is paid for delivering the cargo, even though it ends up at the bottom of the sea), Marshall is simply a diminished and diminishing figure who walks away down the quayside, while the crew of the Maggie celebrate. The big (Marshall) is made small, but the small (MacTaggart) remains small and petty, hardly a figure to emulate.

Is it too much to speculate that the film, despite trying to satirise two ways of life, is also suggesting that the struggle of the Maggie is ultimately futile against American economic might (even if small victories such as this can be won)? MacTaggart may be a canny and smart Scotsman, but American culture might be seeping into his world whether he likes it or not: given the presence of a Superman comic onboard that seems more enticing to the crew than the scenery of the Highlands they are sailing past...

Outside such thematic and character concerns, the film contains nice visual touches that show off Mackendrick and Gordon Dines’ work, with strong images of both urban (Glasgow docks) and rural (highlands and islands) Scottish landscapes; the Maggie, marooned at high tide, is a striking composition, as is MacTaggart and Marshall’s lonely trek along the beach to a nearby village; the camera, sinking to the level of a pier as the planks are torn asunder; there are also subtler moments, such as young Dougie stroking the ship’s wheel (when he thinks no one is looking), Dougie and Hamish swinging from the boat to the land using the jib; or Marshall, wreathed in shadows in his bunk onboard, struggling with his anger over MacTaggart.

In the end, as the cargo is thrown overboard, Marshall says ‘it was bound to happen, it was the only thing left that could happen’: the line can be read as a judgement on the film itself. Having thrown farce, black character comedy and moral judgements at the screen, the only route left is slapstick, throwing the bathroom into the water and accepting defeat. It is a lesson Mackendrick and Rose would apply to their next black comedy, The Ladykillers (1955).

[The Maggie is available on DVD from Studio Canal UK. See www.studiocanal.co.uk for more details]

Next time, we go Undercover (1943)...

The Great Ealing Film Challenge 67: Cheer Boys Cheer (1939)

Ealing’s eighth film after Michael Balcon’s arrival at the studio is one of those that is permanently stuck in the debate over what makes a film ‘Ealing-esque’ or, indeed, what makes a comedy an Ealing comedy? Cheer Boys Cheer is a comedy, produced at Ealing, which concerns a struggle between Greenleaf (a small, traditional local brewery with community values) and Ironside (a huge, mechanised national brewery with eyes only on the profit margin). Barr sees the film as somehow prophetic, with Ealing as Greenleaf, standing up against the Ironsides of the film industry. While the argument remains valid, I can’t help wondering how many other films of the time period also set up similar small vs. big, community vs. industry comparisons, or if the film is as important in Ealing’s development as Barr suggests.

Well-paced and still funny in places, the film hammers home the oppositions suggested above with little subtlety: the metallic machines of Ironside gleam, as workers in white scientist coats stride between them; while the wooden crates and vats at Greenleaf are tended by a group of loyal misfits. The Ironside family favour impersonal board rooms and the accumulation of wealth; while the Greenleafs and their workers gather in a communal dining room and Greenleaf senior has a collection of antique Toby jugs. The central plot concerns Edward Ironside (Edmund Gwenn) and his son John (Peter Coke) attempting to take over the family business run by Tom Greenleaf (C.V. France) and daughter Margaret (Nora Pilbeam), a take-over complicated when John, working at Greenleaf under an assumed identity, falls in love with Margaret.

The reason the film likely struggles to claim classic Ealing comedy status is the insistence on broad and forced slapstick routines, notably based around Greenleaf staff Albert Baldwin (Graham Moffat) and Geordie (Moore Marriott), actors loaned out from Gainsborough and delivering music hall-style pratfalls, fights and bickering (filling a car full of grain, fighting in a pub; slapping and arguing with each other). As for the central romance, the film’s bitter rivals turned sweethearts plot includes some... dubious sequences: most notably, when John (despite having only met her minutes before), bends firebrand Margaret over a car door and starts spanking her.

Margaret remains the only significant woman in the film (there is a brief appearance by Jean Webster Brough as the barmaid at the Cross Keys pub), and Pilbeam plays her as a strong, opinionated and intelligent woman who is more than an equal partner at Greenleaf, making many of the business decisions when her father cannot, and the object of affection of both John and Greenleaf brewer Mat Boyle (Jimmy O’Dea). Yet it is hard to shake the suspicion that the film is, in part, an attempt to tame her character: early on, she is wild and impetuous, drives like a woman possessed, voices her opinions strongly and confidently... but then becomes calmer as she and John grow closer, and then dejected and forlorn when they split up. Given the heterosexual pairing the film is inexorably heading towards – Margaret accepting John back seals the business ‘marriage’ – it remains unclear whether she will remain an equal in the joint Greenleaf-Ironside venture.

The film also fails to sell the change that comes over John, at least in part because of a solid but uninspired performance by Coke (who is acted off the screen by Pilbeam at every turn) but mainly a script that needs the character to change for plot contrivance. John has to shift from a hard-nosed sexist businessman who’ll do anything to get his way, to a sly undercover operative at Greenleaf, to a Greenleaf supporter willing to spend his own money to pay for a huge advertising budget, a cunning saboteur of his own father’s business, and then an accepted husband and owner of both breweries. The tacit assumption is that romance and homespun community values make the change, but the film doesn’t show us this, it simply tells us it happened.

Visually, the film is competent if not amazing: director Walter Ford and director of photography Ronald Neame do try some interesting tricks – an opening credit sequence where the titles are printed on the side of beer crates that roll into camera along a conveyor belt; matte or process shots that increase the scale of Ironsides brewery; sped-up images of fast car rides; an impressive montage sequence of Ironside vans, beer and newspaper headlines near the end of the film; and strong use of sound effects in key sequences, notably John, Matt and the others breaking in to Ironside’s brewery to spike their beer and dropping a tool down a metal canister – the loud bouncing, echoing and clanging goes on far beyond what is realistic, but it adds to the film’s playfulness and slightly unreal atmosphere.

Always solid, Cheer Boys Cheer may not be a full-fledged ‘Ealing comedy’ but it remains an enjoyable precursor of later Ealing themes and narrative interests.

[UPDATED April 2014: Cheer Boys Cheer is now available as part of The Ealing Studios Rarities Collection, Volume 9, from Network]

Next time, another of Ealing's Scottish comedies, in The Maggie (1953)

The Great Ealing Film Challenge 66: Out of the Clouds (1955)

After watching Out of the Clouds, I am ready to declare that the unsung hero of the 1950s stretch of my Ealing marathon is currently Sid James. This is not to back away from my belief that Mervyn Johns is the strongest and most varied actor across these 95 films, or to take anything away from the comic performance genius of Alec Guinness, but to note that, despite often appearing for less than 5 minutes per film, James steals whole sequences with a resigned sigh, world-weary shrug, or bitter one-liner. While this ability would, obviously, be put to great use in the later Carry On... series, it does help to puncture the occasionally pompous tone of several of Ealing’s 1950s films. If you don’t believe me, I suggest rewatching The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), The Titfield Thunderbolt (1953), The Square Ring (1953), The Rainbow Jacket (1954), or The Shiralee (1957) to see what I mean.

That’s not to say that James’ blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearance in this film is the best thing about Out of the Clouds – he’s a gambler eyeing up the potential insurance payout if his wife (Barbara Leake) dies while flying – but that it sets an early comic tone in this broad airport drama that flutters uncertainty between drama and comedy throughout. James’ character is a brief portrait of one of the many people passing through the airport: Leah Rosch (Margo Lorenz) is in transit to New York where she’s marrying a man she doesn’t love; American Bill Steiner (David Knight) is going to Israel to make his fortune; an older lady (Marie Lohr) who swears by sleeping tablets for airplane travel; and her put-upon companion (Esma Cannon). On the other side, we meet a range of airport staff: cocky pilot Gus Randall (Anthony Steel) who sleeps around and engaged in borderline illegal activities; duty officer Nick Milbourne (Robert Beatty) wants to get his pilot’s licence back so he can get back into the air; cabin crew member Penny Henson (Eunice Grayson), in love with Nick and lusted after by Gus; experienced pilot Brent (James Robertson Justice) who has mechanical problems with the planes; Customs Officer Steve (Bernard Lee) who suspects Gus of smuggling et al.

The film confidently weaves its narrative threads around this disparate group of characters: Rosch and Steiner are (separately) on planes manned by Gus, Brent and Penny; Nick’s decisions allow them to spend an evening together; Gus’ pass at Penny reveals her feelings for Nick; Nick’s failure to pass a physical actually pushes him and Penny together. Basil Dearden’s direction and control is solid, prioritising the story but also throwing in some stylistic quirks that raises its creative game: a great ‘aircraft-in-trouble’ sequence, with Brent’s plane being talked down in heavy fog from the emergency control base, a room shrouded in black and lit only by the green and red tones of the instruments and equipment; a series of images of foggy London landscapes wreathed in unnatural yellow and orange tones; and a series of long tracking shots through the main terminal hall at London Airport (modelled closely on the real hall at Heathrow).

Like all portmanteau films in Ealing’s back catalogue, sections of the film work better than others, but this makes the error of opting for happy endings to all the stories (unlike the enjoyably chaotic train crash in Train of Events (1949) or the never-ending dream of 1945s Dead of Night). Therefore, the film creates psychologically interesting characters in Rosch and Steiner (that engage with post-war issues around the treatment of Jews in Britain, and the creation of Israel) but then allows their unlikely whirlwind romance to linger too long and then end happily. Equally, the fun of Steel’s Gus Randall remains his morally grey playboy status, not his last minute conversion to the forces of good when he foils an international drug smuggling racket. The nanny-ish qualities of Ealing feel at the fore here, particularly when Randall then talks about settling down, and asks for advice from the more maternal Mrs Malcolm (Isabel Dean).

Those quirks aside, there remains a lot to enjoy here: although I wasn’t a fan of his early Ealing performances, Beatty is strong here as the put-upon Milbourne. Performing the character’s desperation to get his pilot’s wings back isn’t much of a challenge, but the struggle Milbourne goes through when he realises he is a born leader to the crew on the ground is more subtle, but nicely played. The film uses colour well throughout, particularly in the sequences listed about but also picking out characters and narrative situations – such as the ‘thin red line’ of a rope that separates transit passengers from ‘Britain’ but which introduces Leah and Bill. And, although not my thing, any airplane or airport fetishists will be overjoyed with the numerous shots of 1950s Heathrow and the various aircraft that flew from the airport.

[Out of the Clouds is available on DVD from Studio Canal UK. See www.studiocanal.co.uk for more details]

Next time, we're going back (almost) to the start, as we raise a glass to Cheer Boys Cheer (1939)...

The Great Ealing Film Challenge 65: The Big Blockade (1942)

When Ealing is described as producing a strong combination of drama and documentary work during their Second World War propaganda films (continuing the tradition set by the GPO Film Unit), titles like The Next of Kin (1942), San Demetrio London (1943), and For Those in Peril (1944) tend to crop up. These are solid, entertaining films that get their message across in no uncertain terms, but at least have the decency to clothe those messages in compelling narratives and with compelling performances. The Big Blockade, by contrast, feels like an early experiment that gets more things wrong than right.

The warning signs are there from the opening scene, when the narrator speaks directly to camera in a hectoring authoritarian tone about the importance of learning more about the big blockade organised by the Ministry of Economic Warfare (objective? ‘Choke the life out of German trade and industry’) The lecturing style continues, albeit over a more visually interesting montages of ships, tanks, railways lines, before jumping to images of an RAF bomber squadron taking off to bomb Hannover. And at this stage, the film takes its strangest turn, because the brief glimpses we get of the crew of the ‘T for Tommy’ bomber reveals they are well-known actors like Michael Rennie and John Mills. But then they’re gone, as the film flashes back to 1939 and the start of a series of dramatic and comic vignettes around the organisation and effects of the blockade on Britain, Germany, Italy and Russia.

This could be read as an early attempt at what, several years later, Ealing would perfect in a portmanteau film like Dead of Night (1945), but what it actually feels like is a variety show, where a series of British actors (and the occasional actress: Thora Hird has a brief part as a German barmaid) trundle onto stage, do a turn, and then get off again as quick as they can. In the space of 73 minutes, there are ‘turns’ by Will Hay, Bernard Lee, Marius Goring, Robert Morley (as a splendidly ranting authoritarian and Italy-bashing Nazi chief), Leslie Banks, Michael Redgrave and other recognisable names from British film. There is no plot to speak of, beyond hailing the achievements of the Ministry, challenging German propaganda, and making claims about how the blockade will soon bring Germany to its knees.

Angus Macphail’s script does return to certain characters: Schneider (Frank Cellier), from a Hannover sausage factory, whose beliefs in the German way of life are casually mocked, first by the British Mr Taylor (Banks) and later a Russian officer (Redgrave); Taylor, who works for the Ministry, crops up several times to reiterate the message that the blockade is good, but has no real narrative purpose beyond that; the management of a Hannover factory who end up celebrating its destruction so they have an excuse to avoid being sent to Dachau. And the crew of ‘T for Tommy’ return in the final ten minutes, successfully destroying a Hannover powerhouse and returning home. But although Macphail tries hard, there is no coherent narrative here, no recognisable characters to follow: the film is simply a series of unconnected events pulled together by its narrator.

Stylistically, the film is also a mixture of disparate elements: war reportage from Douglas Slocombe, clips of German propaganda, Wilkie Cooper’s largely flat studio-based photography (although it occasionally finds visual life, as in the Morley sequences where he is lording it over representatives of occupied countries), newsreel footage and several model sequences of plane dogfights, strafing runs on boats, and bomber raids by the RAF on the Hannover factories.

What is most amusing, and unsaid, is that much of what the film mocks in Germany, it celebrates in relation to Britain: when the German air raid official is bureaucratic and strict, it is amusing; but when British clerks and naval officers use bureaucracy to keep German ships in port, it is cunning and satirical. Equally, when Germany has a master plan, it must be stopped; when the Ministry comes up with a master plan for British victory, its big blockade is hailed as the obvious step to victory. But then that is the essence of propaganda: always tell a bigger and better story than the other side.

Ultimately, The Big Blockade throws a lot of story at the screen, but it is better understood as a misfire that Ealing would learn from in order to produce better – and more enjoyable – story-documentaries.

[UPDATED April 2014: The Big Blockade is now available as part of The Ealing Studios Rarities Collection, Volume 2, from Network]
 

Next time, we stick with airplanes as we head Out of the Clouds (1955)...

The Great Ealing Film Challenge 64: Secret People (1952)

I really wanted to like Secret People more than I did. Made within a year of The Gentle Gunman (1952), another Ealing project around terrorism (although about the IRA rather than the unidentified and Europe-wide ‘Organisation’ at the heart of this film), Secret People is obviously trying to do something different with its story, but I’m uncertain it succeeds or is as morally ambiguous as it claims to be. There’s no doubting the quality of the filmmaking, or the performances, but the film just doesn’t work as a whole, perhaps because the central relationships that fuel the narrative fail to convince.

In 1930, Maria Brentano (Valentina Cortese) and her sister Nora (Angela Fouldes) are sent to stay with Anselmo (Charles Goldner), a European settled in London and running a cafe. Maria and Nora’s father, a well-known left wing writer in the unidentified European country from which they have fled (and a critic of the new military ruler General Galbern), dies in custody; while Maria’s sweetheart Louis (Serge Reggiani) has gone into hiding. The sisters are brought up by Anselmo, who helps them get British citizenship: by 1937, Maria is working in the cafe, while Nora (now played by Audrey Hepburn) has a budding career as a ballet dancer. Yet Galbern continues to intrude on their lives, however accidentally: interviews in national newspapers and, in Paris, visiting the same British exhibition as them. In Paris, Maria meets Louis again and is drawn into the mysterious terrorist / rebel organisation that he is a member of. Louis manoeuvres Nora into an opportunity at a London society party that Galbern is attending, and convinces Maria to carry a bomb into the party. When the bomb kills a waitress by accident, Maria rejects Louis’ ways and the organisation’s creed of achieving their goals any way they can, confesses all to the police, is given a new identity (Lena Collins), but is then drawn back in when she realises the organisation has recruited Nora.

That synopsis covers the bare bones, but doesn’t really get to grips with the film’s attempt to deal with larger moral issues: political assassination, rebel causes, blind loyalty, personal vs. public politics, sisterly competition. Throw in director Thorold Dickinson’s own political beliefs, his desire for British cinema to raise its artistic ambitions, Ealing Studios’ more conservative outlook, and the presence of compelling performances from European stars Cortese, Regianni and Goldner, and the film is a striking creation of disparate and competing parts (the DVD features a useful introduction by Philip Thorne that goes into more detail on the background of the film than I can here). But that heady brew is also what complicates and, I think, prevents it from completely gelling as a film.

So what works? Well, the female-centric storyline is strong throughout, with a good meaty role for Cortese, and solid supporting work from Hepburn, Irene Worth (as Jackson, a policewoman who helps Maria in the latter part of the film) and Meg Jenkins, in a smaller role as the other café worker, Penny. Cortese goes some way to selling the more melodramatic elements of the film, notably the tempestuous relationship between Maria and the mysterious Louis, but the film requires such abrupt shifts in her character (most notably when she breaks down after the death of the waitress) that it can be difficult to keep up. Her interactions with Hepburn sell the sisterly bond well – there is a lovely moment where Hepburn, about to audition, appears to wink at the audience, yet she is actually winking at Maria, sat off to one side and reflected in the mirror – but the final confrontation between Maria and Nora is too brief to cover everything the moment needs (not least the fact that we learn Louis has seduced Nora, largely through tales of her heroic sister). Hepburn can also be a little of a blank slate at times, but then that is largely the role of the younger sister as written here. The male characters are less convincing: Louis is a one-note cipher, mysterious and willing to do anything for the cause, but with no real sense of what drives him; more successful is Anselmo, avuncular, bluff, clever and heroic in equal measure, driven to be a good man for his adopted country and his the children thrust upon him.

The film looks impressive and has its own visual style, with Dickinson and DoP Gordon Dines filling their frames with activity (there are several scenes composed in depth, most obviously in the cafe and at the society party, with a wealth of fore- and background activity to comprehend), and using subtle spatial tricks (the post-party Maria walking ‘from’ her darkened room into her memory of the garden party in one smooth shot) to highlight shifts in tone. There are also strong visual narrative touches which seem unusual choices at the time – Maria’s interrogation by the London ‘committee’ of the organisation takes place in a darkened room, where she can only hear voices and see their shoes – but which pay off well in the final ten minutes when a distinctive voice and pair of shoes return.

But with all that, the film struggles to maintain narrative or tonal coherence, particularly towards the end: the final scenes, where Maria becomes Lena, moves to Ireland, sees Nora perform, realises the organisation is back, confronts Louis again, speed past and undo much of the earlier, steady work building up these characters and situations. I’m loathe to cry censorship again, despite talk of the UK Communist party disrupting public screenings and Ealing trimming what they saw as a difficult film (the BBFC website shows a 95 minute 55 second run time passed in August 1951, which matches up with the DVD) but the rush to conclude the narrative feels just that: rushed.

Fascinating yet frustrating, the film remains a curio if only to see what Dickinson and Ealing might have produced together, after their earlier success with The Next of Kin (1943).

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

Next time, Ealing's most blatant war propaganda in The Big Blockade (1942)...

The Great Ealing Film Challenge 63: Meet Mr Lucifer (1953)

For a studio whose reputation is so rooted in realism, Ealing enjoyed dabbling with fantasy, from dream sequences in Let George Do It (1941) and The Love Lottery (1954) to the more supernatural-infused plots of The Halfway House (1944) and The Ship that Died of Shame (1955) to this curiosity, a portmanteau-style film with sees Lucifer himself (Stanley Hollyway, in a dual role) trying to hypnotise and distract the world through the new technology of television.

The 1950s context of the British film industry cannot be avoided with this film, even if the film vs. television debate is more complex than the standard war/battle analogies allow. Ealing had flirted with anti-television sentiments before (a short sequence in The Titfield Thunderbolt) and had a history of radio mockery from Let’s Be Famous (1939) on. While devoting an entire film to the topic seems untypical, this is also a period where Ealing was looking more closely to contemporary events and debates to fuel screenplays: film fanaticism and media manipulation in The Love Lottery, the ‘social problem’ of youth in The Blue Lamp (1950), racism in Pool of London (1951) or the changing nature of sports and betting in The Square Ring (1953) and The Rainbow Jacket (1954).

However, there is also a sense that television could simply be a useful structural device, no more inherently evil than the fateful crash that brings together the characters of Train of Events, or the plane flight of The Night My Number Came Up (1955), portmanteau Ealing projects that this film bears some resemblance to. The single television set at the heart of this narrative could, then, be nothing more than the narrative glue needed to tell stories about age, retirement, young love, and media obsession. The film makes some broad claims about television – the devil comments that TV is ‘so much more effective than the old fashioned lodger’ in splitting up relationships, while Hector McPhee (Gordon Jackson) is described as not being the same ‘since he got television’ – but its devilish impact is never quite as intrusive or all-consuming as you might expect. In fact, given TV content shown during the film – sports, panel shows, documentary, variety, cookery programmes, news – it arguably ends up looking like an attractive technology.

As with any episodic film, Meet Mr Lucifer ebbs and flows, loosely held together by a framing structure of drunken pantomime actor Sam Hollingsworth (Holloway) who, knocked unconscious at the theatre, imagines himself descending into hell, where Lucifer demonstrates how he is trying to use television for evil. The link between this and the individual stories is a single television set that moves between three sets of owners: from retired accountant Pedelty (Joseph Tomelty) and his daughter Pat (Barbara Murray), via his neighbours, honeymoon couple Jim and Kitty Norton (Jack Watling and Peggy Cummins), to Hector, who works alongside Jim in the local pharmacy. In all three cases, the television is placed as the source of tension and trouble – yet it never appears to be a very effective catalyst, simply heightening existing tensions or tendencies. Pedelty runs up debts while entertaining the new friends he makes through his television set; Jim and Kitty split because she is distracted from wifely duties by the television (and because he kisses Pat); while Hector becomes obsessed with a television singer (Kay Kendall).

The film also neglects the comic elements that might have lifted this broad satire: despite posters describing it as a ‘devil-may-care joker’ the script is leaden when it should be light, and only Stanley Holloway (in a variety of disguises, doing the devil’s work) offers the occasional wink at camera that the film needed to disguise its flimsy structure. The rest of the performances are decent, with Cummins and Watling amusing as naive newlyweds, and Jackson moving out of his comfort zone as the steady, reliable type to play a more complex character, one whose infatuation with the TV star (and the set she appears on) presents the film’s darkest hypothesis about the impact of television. Hector’s growing obsession with the image actually changes him as a person, at first making him more accessible and happy, but gradually turning compulsive and insular: this is most obvious in a series of single shots on Hector as he watches her, a play of emotions passing over his face as the camera pushes in tighter and tighter, offering an example of television’s ‘mass hypnotism’ that Hollingsworth complains about in the film’s opening scene.

The film is also confused about more standard Ealing concerns: despite the television apparently fostering new communities (Pedelty has a house full of guests who want to watch the new set; yet they desert him when he gives the set away), the ‘true’ community remains the local pub and the theatre (television is drawing people away from the latter, where the pantomime plays to much reduced audiences). Old versus new is both supported and satirised: Pedelty’s boss Mr Patterson (a brief but magnificent turn by Raymond Huntley) ridicules him for using an abacus, despite it being as fast as a new accounting machine; yet the ‘new’ television is the butt of many jokes throughout, and 3-D (another concurrent new technology) becomes the devil’s plaything in the film’s closing scenes (where Holloway’s devil swoops out of a cinema screen and lands in the audience, ‘a Lucifer in your lap’). Sex is also central to two of the stories: Kitty (‘a much more attractive instrument of the devil’) makes a pointed off-screen request for Jim to come to bed because she’s cold (she also uses seduction to convince him to buy a TV), Pat and Jim’s sexual attraction (albeit one fostered by her adopting a more traditional housewife’s role, building a fire and offering to make him supper – which he describes as ‘throwing her sex appeal at me’), and Hector’s sexual obsession with the singer.

Despite confused themes, and problems around humour and structure, the film remains a fascinating window on Ealing’s attempt to understand this new medium – a consumerist technology, designed to foster drunkenness and profligate behaviour, and ruin marriages – yet one to which Ealing, several years later, would gratefully sell its film to raise more money to fund its cinematic productions.

[UPDATED April 2014: Meet Mr Lucifer is now available as part of The Ealing Studios Rarities Collection, Volume 9, from Network]

Next time, politics, assassination, regret and Audrey Hepburn - in Secret People (1952)

The Great Ealing Film Challenge 62: The Siege of Pinchgut (1959)

It is tempting to claim that the most striking visual element of this film (called Four Desperate Men in U.S.), is its final one: the ‘Ealing films’ logo fading to black, bringing to an end 21 years worth of continuous production under Michael Balcon. But that is arguably as reductive as Charles Barr’s statement that the film ends with ‘a return to security and the embrace of law... back from the island to the city community’ (Barr 1980, 194). With all this talk of endings, and final thematic statements, something is lost: namely the 100 minutes or so of film that lead up to them, in a film that strives for heights that it cannot quite attain.

There is an eerie quality to the film throughout, as though the urban Sydney landscape it takes place in is as actually as deserted and desolate as the outback landscapes so familiar to earlier Ealing Australian films The Overlanders (1946) and The Shiralee (1957). The opening images, of a solitary ambulance driving down winding streets into the city, through police checkpoints, and into the bigger streets, sets up this unusual visual tone that the film plays to, perhaps aided by the widescreen image that captures a lot of empty space either side of the main action. Director Harry Watt, returning to Australian production after a decade away, plays to the strengths of the location filming throughout: scenes set on the Harbour Bridge, the docksides, on and around Fort Denison, the island location where most of the action takes place. Yet Sydney remains under-populated throughout, a ghost city to match the outback ghost towns of Watt’s earlier Australian westerns – most obvious in the scenes following the evacuation, where the only movement down these long canyon streets is a single motorbike cop or army convoy.

The story follows Matt Kirk (Aldo Ray), a prison escapee helped by his brother Johnny (Neil McCallum), and fellow hoodlums Bert (Victor Maddern) and hothead Italian Luke (Carlo Giustini), to escape Sydney and, ostensibly, prove his innocence. After boat troubles, they end up stranded on Pinchgut Island, a small rocky outcrop in Sydney harbour, where the small Fort Denison is located. The fort, a tourist attraction, is home to Pat Fulton (Gerry Duggan), his wife (Barbara Mullen), and daughter Ann (Heather Sears), who the gang take hostage as they plan their escape. What follows is a convoluted narrative about Matt’s increasing anger and uncertainty, Johnny’s growing mistrust, the authorities’ desire to capture the gang by any means necessary, and the gang’s scheme to use a wartime gun battery aimed at Sydney and a boat loaded with gelignite to hold the city to ransom.

George Perry has noted that the film leaves audiences unsure who to root for (Perry 1981, 171), and it is true that neither Ray or the police/politicians are strong contenders here; the latter are certainly not as morally endorsed as Barr claims, with their regular meetings showing disarray and uncertainty rather than moral leadership. The main policeman, Superintendent Hanna (Alan Tilvern) remains a well-worn hard-as-nails cliché, while his superiors largely protect themselves and their jobs as much as the city, and the fourth estate are agog at the idea of an explosion in Sydney, falling over themselves to publish the most spectacular photographs from similar blasts. The film does tend towards an armed police fetish, with lovingly framed images of them swarming over buildings and the harbour bridge, and a final denouement that includes armed frogmen emerging from the harbour onto the island: but it also remains unsure about the use of force, given that the most innocent of the gang, Johnny, is shot by an over-eager cop early on. While there is never any doubt the film will end with an armed battle between crooks and the gang, it does wring its hands throughout as though hoping another choice will present itself.

At heart, then, this is a solid crime thriller with some decent performances, even if Ray can’t quite pull off the layers that the film wants to heap on Matt’s shoulders: is he as innocent as he claims (at one point the politicians agree he should have had an appeal; only Hanna seems certain of this, and his main evidence is that 12 men were convinced at the trial – but this comes after television vox-pops of similar men that the politicians mock), or a hardened criminal? The film cannot decide if he is the injured party, driven to desperate ends (and thus justified in at least some of his actions), or a misguided criminal, whom we want to see punished. In one sense, that moral uncertainty is indicative of a larger movement within culture towards anti-heroes and characters who inhabit grey areas of morality (Matt Kirk is a perfect late 60s hero, appearing a decade too early), but here the film simply cannot make sense of him, and ends up creating a raging monster rather than the nuanced character suggested in the first hour.

Johnny, Bert and Luke are rarely more than ciphers, despite good work particularly from Maddern and Giustini (initially stuck in a stereotype, but working hard to break out of it), and the Fultons are never more than plucky hostages, despite the film’s need to try and manufacture a relationship between Johnny and Ann.

What raises the film beyond a standard B-grade thriller is, however, its visual style. As well as the sense of spatial emptiness set up earlier – definitely a by-product of its use of widescreen and wide angle lenses – Watt and DoP Gordon Dine (also responsible for the strong cinematography of The Ship That Died of Shame, 1955; and The Long Arm, 1956) produce strong compositions on location and in the claustrophobic sets built at Elstree. Harbour cranes silhouetted against darkening skies; shots of the island framed through tree branches; the harbour bridge omnipresent, looming over the action; the arguing brothers balanced in the background around the pivot of Ann, answering the telephone in the foreground; the increasingly twisty, shadowy nature of the corridors of the fort as Matt descends into desperation and rage.

 
The film, then, should be viewed as more than just the last Ealing film, or one that it is imbued with some final relevance. Like many of the films seen in this blog, those contexts are there (and important), but the film deserves to be viewed in its own right as a well-produced if flawed thriller.
 

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

Next time, Ealing takes aim at a new enemy... television? Meet Mr Lucifer (1953)...