The Great Ealing Film Challenge 20: The Man in the White Suit (1951)

At the end of my last blog, I claimed this film was one of Ealing’s contributions to the ‘science fiction’ genre, a claim I also make (albeit in passing) in my new book Science Fiction Film: A Critical Introduction (Berg 2011). Given I didn’t have space to pursue that argument in depth in the book, I want to explore the film’s relationship to genre in this post, and think how some of its choices might challenge easy generic assumptions around this supposedly classic ‘Ealing comedy.’

I note at the start of Science Fiction Film that a ‘concrete, unyielding definition’ can be reductive when dealing with SF, a genre as ‘notable for its flexibility and... hybridity as it is for a series of conventions around developing technology or science.’ However, it is clear that many a genre film ‘engages with (and visualises) cultural debates around... the future, artificial creation, technological invention... [and] scientific experimentation.’ (Johnson 2011, 1) To my mind, The Man in the White Suit fulfils several of those categories, as a film whose narrative constantly returns to technology, its products, and the wider cultural reaction to new discoveries.

Take Sidney Stratton’s (Alec Guinness) laboratory equipment: a twisting, coiling series of glass tubes and beakers, through which shoot spurts of liquid, which eventually come to rest as a bubbling and pulsating viscous form in the largest container. Every appearance of this apparatus is hailed by a beautiful piece of sound design: a burbling, electronic, throbbing sonic presence that suggests whatever is in those beakers is unusual, alien, ‘other,’ in some way. The film knowingly borrows aural and visual design elements from existing film portrayals of the ‘mad scientist’ figure and those scientist’s laboratories, familiar locations to audiences au fait with Frankenstein (1932) and The Invisible Man (1933) (films that tend to be referred to as ‘horror,’ however broad and inaccurate that definition might be here). Indeed, many of the films of this period that present a mad scientist joyfully bounce between science fiction, horror, thriller, gangster and comedy genre identities: the likes of The Invisible Ray (1936), Frankenstein vs. the Wolf Man (1943) or The Perfect Woman (1949) are generic hybrids that foreground ‘mad’ science and similar complicated laboratory set-ups (from which chaos, inevitably ensues).

Stratton himself shares generic similarities with earlier scientific figures such as Dr. Frankenstein, Dr Jekyll or Dr Griffin, all of whom had been regularly brought to cinematic life. Committed and driven, conscious only of his work (and associated experiments), socially inept, and unaware of larger issues (moral, economic or personal), Stratton is blind to anything but the laboratory and the big idea. Yet this naive and innocent persona can also switch, in the same scene, to cocky and pompous, a quality also shared by his generic predecessors: it is to Guinness’ credit that Stratton remains likeable throughout much of the film, despite this mercurial personality. Those moments where the naive mask briefly drops remind us that a film about black and white has a central figure who is himself morally grey.

These science fiction themes – and the obvious parallel to stories such as Frankenstein – occur through visual/aural display, character and narrative. The story of The Man in the White Suit is familiar to anyone who has watched earlier genre films: the brilliant, but driven, scientist creates something new; his creation threatens to disrupt the social order (often physically, as in the case of Frankenstein’s Monster, or Metropolis’ robotic Maria); forcing the representatives of society gather to try and control the scientist and his creation. The end of this film features (quite literally) a rampaging mob of villagers racing through the streets of Wellsborough in pursuit of the mad scientist and his creation, the suit, which threatens all of their lives. Stratton is creator and creation, mad scientist and monstrous figure by the end, a luminous glowing presence in the dark and mean streets of Wellsborough (and which offer another potential generic thread – of film noir – through Douglas Slocombe’s gorgeous cinematography): it is no accident that the mob that chase and corner Stratton literally tear the monster to pieces, shredding his suit in their hands and destroying the ‘other’ that has upset their social situation. It is also firmly hinted that Stratton, like all great mad scientists, is still concocting new, more advanced, creations – the film’s coda has him walking out of Birnley’s mill, struck by a thought, and striding down the street, while the sonic laboratory noises rise to dominate the soundtrack.

Author John Wyndham felt the science fiction genre imagined ‘a technology, or an effect of a technology... such as humanity, up to the time of writing, has not in actual fact experienced.’ (Wyndham The Seeds of Time, 1968, 7) The Man in the White Suit takes that idea – the effect of a new (as yet undiscovered) technology as its central issue: what would the effect be if someone created a miraculous new artificial fabric that couldn’t be destroyed, wouldn’t ever get dirty, or wear out? As Charles Barr has pointed out, it means the film engages with industrial relations, wealth, and the obstructive nature of big business, but at its heart, this remains a story about technology. The film opens on shots of an electric weaving machine; its camera glides across scientific workbenches full of Bunsen burners, test tubes and electric equipment; the lingering shots of Stratton’s workbench, both small and (once mill owner Birnley (Cecil Parker) employs him) larger and more impressive renditions of the same equipment. Telephones play an important role in the comic misunderstandings that power much of the narrative; while Stratton’s new cotton thread is presented as the most technologically advanced element known to man.

Despite the presence of all these strong generic conventions, the film is rarely discussed in these terms, but more in relation to its comic and political roots. Barr sets the tone by seeing the film as ‘a statement about England... governed by consensus’ and a ‘story of frustration, blockage and stagnation’ (Barr 1980, 134-5). To me, however, this reading is too reliant on Barr’s overarching narrative of Ealing (and Britain) stagnating through the 1950s to focus on the visual and thematic content of this one film. His sense of the film as a dramatisation of Alexander Mackendrick and Michael Balcon’s relationship is fascinating, but does appear to ignore the broader generic and intertextual world highlighted above (and often the evidence of the film) in favour of anecdotal evidence of Balcon’s leadership.

The film challenges aspects of Ealing’s ‘small is good, big is bad’ comedic world (seen in Passport to Pimlico (1948) and The Titfield Thunderbolt (1953) by ridiculing big and small: the business of Birnley Mills and the bigger business of the British textile industry (represented in gothic fashion by Ernest Thesiger as Sir John Kierlaw, a cadaverous spider at the centre of the textile web) is satirised as first desperate for, and fearful of, this new fabric. Yet the ‘small’ (here represented by both trade unionism and individual labourers such as Stratton’s landlady, Mrs Watson – Edie Martin) is also anti-Stratton, because his invention threatens their livelihood: the main representative of this position, Stratton’s friend Bertha, tells him off for not taking a tea break which ‘we had to fight for’ and, upon hearing he has a new (unpaid job) retorts ‘I don’t care whether you want to get paid or not – you’ve got to get paid.’ Like the trade union representatives (and the Ministry) in Titfield, neither side understands the central character’s obsession: big and small eventually join forces (a curious echo of Metropolis where labour and management come together) to hunt Stratton down.

As noted above, the film features a tour-de-force performance from Alec Guinness as the guileless but arrogant Stratton, but the film has several other strong performances: Cecil Parker is smug and scared in equal measure by the change in his mill’s fortunes; Thesiger is presented as evil incarnate, cocooned within a voluminous cloak, or sinking into high-backed chairs, offering to prostitute Birnley’s daughter, Daphne, if it will get him the result he wants.  Daphne (Joan Greenwood) is more problematic as a character – and, as Barr notes, disappears from the film when her role is fulfilled. She appears as fiancé to Michael Corland (Michael Gough), head of a another mill (where Stratton initially works) but is drawn to Stratton’s equipment and experiments well ahead of any male character. The relationship with Corland largely disappears, Daphne spots Stratton at her father’s mill, but then becomes interested in his work, showing an aptitude for the science, and supporting his ideas (she is, as Barr notes, the person who actually explains what Stratton’s invention can do). Daphne acts as a voice of optimism in the film: she sees the possibilities of the material, where Stratton only sees the science, and the textile industry/union only see the problems it will cause.

Daphne is also both sexualised by the men in power, and blithely aware of the power of her own sexuality. In a sexually charged scene with innuendo-laden dialogue, Kierlaw offers Daphne money to seduce Stratton and convince him to sign a new contract: she is aware of what is being asked, and demands more money for the job. Greenwood is particularly strong here as, in the course of five minutes, she has to go from conniving femme fatale with Kierlaw, through seductress (with Stratton), to idealistic crusader when she gets Stratton to agree to reveal his story (and material) to the world.

The comedy elements of the film are obviously not inconsequential: there are some great verbal exchanges (Stratton declares ‘I won’t stay in your house another minute’ just before Birnley’s butler succeeds in throwing him out) and visual touches (Stratton, in his luminous white suit, tries to hide below an advertisement for raincoats that promise to hide ‘a multitude’). This is a film of multiple generic pleasures: science fiction (and aspects of horror) in its topic, themes, character and visual aspects; thriller or film noir in the rain-soaked dark streets and alleys where Stratton hides from the mob, or the appearance of the textile barons like gangsters in their overcoats and matching black cars; comedy in its dialogue and physical slapstick. To insist the film sits within one category lessens the film and its place within the Ealing canon.

The Great Ealing Film Challenge 19: The Titfield Thunderbolt (1953)

Eighteen films later, we’re back playing with trains in The Titfield Thunderbolt. The very image of this film has come to stand from something essential about the Ealing comedy and Ealing Studios – a quaint cosy little village community standing up against consumerism by doing things ‘their way.’ As such, the film has been seen less as about trains and more about a view of Britain as stuck in tradition, unable to understand the possible benevolence of progress. The plot of the film is straightforward: when a local branch line is threatened with closure, a group of villagers group together to save the train line, and battle the ‘big business’ replacement (the Pearce & Crump omnibus service).

Charles Barr’s Ealing Studios (a common reference point for this blog) berates the film for allying itself with amateurs and parasites: ‘mainly from the church, the squirearchy, and the idle rich’ rather than the wider community, creating a backward looking world ‘with no dynamism.’ (163) Barr’s reaction has to be understood in the broader scheme of the book, which celebrates the ‘ironies and ambiguities of the Hamer and Mackendrick comedies’ (little of which he finds in this film, or the other TEB Clarke ‘community’ comedies), and it works to reduce the impact (and scope) of his analysis of what remains a popular and oft-cited Ealing film. Along with Passport to Pimlico and Whisky Galore!, this film sets out many of the characteristics that define terms like ‘Ealing-esque’: films that focus on community over faceless bureaucracy, small versus large, quality versus quantity, which many commentators have seen influencing later films such as Local Hero (1983) and The Full Monty (1997).

It is true that The Titfield Thunderbolt is a broad comedy that revolves around particular stereotypes of small village life and commercialism. It is also, however, a clever and wryly intelligent film that mocks those stereotypes rather than blindly accepting them. It is particularly disingenuous for Barr to suggest that the three central ‘amateurs’ in the film (the vicar Weech (George Relph), squire Gordon (John Gregson) and rich alcoholic Valentine (Stanley Holloway) demonstrate the lack of an actual community. Such a reading fails to address the additional characters who are involved in the railway, from driver Dan (Hugh Griffith) and local businessman Blakeworth (Naunton Wayne) to housekeeper Emily (Edie Martin) and barmaid Joan (Gabrielle Brune): characters that are not part of the religious, landowning classes that Barr identifies. The wider community of the film is largely depicted through extras (notably scenes such as the crowds coming to wave them off, or the cricket team rushing off the pitch to see the train and cheering its passage), but that is equally true of the communities in Passport to Pimlico or Whisky Galore!, where certain individuals are more prominent in the narrative. The novelty of the train is certainly focused on, but it is far from being Barr’s ‘tourist train,’ given characters like Blakeworth rely on it to get to work, and Gordon uses the train to take his produce to market (not quite the act of the idle rich squirearchy Barr tries to construct).

The bureaucrats from the Ministry of Transport, and the owners of Pearce & Crump are painted with broad strokes, but there are subtle touches: one of the ministry men drives an unfeasibly small motorbike to work; the inspector is officious but ultimately charmed by the train; Crump is willing to use muscle to make his point (and happily cheers ‘why are we waiting’ when he is stuck on the train at the end), while Pearce is more cowardly, confessing everything to the police. The men at the heart of the narrative are not one-dimensional either: Weech is a particularly passionate religious figure (even if that passion for steam trains blinds him to the realities of life), while Valentine’s comedy drunk nevertheless steps up and (with Dan) tries to steal a replacement engine to keep the train line running. (Holloway is obviously having fun with the performance, particularly his overawed/childishly happy reaction in the bar when Gordon – cunningly – reveals the train could start selling alcohol first thing in the morning)

Yet the most interesting characters in the film are arguably Blakeworth and Hawkins (Sid James), because they exist in the grey area between the passionate villagers and the businesslike Pearce & Crump. Blakeworth is in the initial meetings with Weech and Gordon about taking over the railway, but then voices his concern over safety at the public meeting; he takes the train to work most days, but also tries out the omnibus; he frets about not being involved (after overhearing a conversation between Pearce and Crump about sabotaging the train) and then is arrested when he attempts to stop them. If Weech, Gordon and Valentine are the heart, Blakeworth is the head, constantly aware of issues around money, safety and timeliness (with the latter two, it turns out, exactly what the Ministry is assessing the line on).

Hawkins is different again (and interesting because of that difference): a local worker who doesn’t seem to care about either mode of transport (arguably because he is normally seen on the back of a steam roller). We first see him holding up Gordon’s motor car through narrow country lanes (possibly another example of steam power delaying more modern progress), then he is roped in by Pearce & Crone in a stand-off between steam train and roller (which the roller loses), before he joins in on full-blown sabotage and destruction. (James’s performance of Hawkins’ look of loss when he thinks the roller is broken, and his angry desire for retribution, is particularly strong and not as broadly comic as his later Carry On fame would suggest) Yet Hawkins is also a character who helps save the day, by allowing the train crew to cannibalise the roller for spares on the final run, with the ministry inspecting them (Hawkins has ulterior motives, notably Joan’s announcement she’ll do anything if he helps, include getting married).

Hawkins is also in two of the film’s more interesting narrative and stylistic moments. In the local pub, after the face-off with the train, he is watching a black-and-white western on the television (and dropping glasses off the bar): the western shows a chase scene with Indians chasing a train, then cuts to a saloon where three outlaw cowboys discuss the failure. At the same moment, Pearce & Crump walk in, and gesture for Hawkins to join them: the camera pushes in on the TV screen, then cuts to Hawkins et al., in similar positions (as the outlaws) in the pub. Even the saloon girl in the western becomes a prim lady with a charity collection tin. Then, just as the three begin to make plans, we cut back to the TV, which flickers, then goes off, before a ‘Normal Service will be resumed’ sign flashes up (Ealing wasn’t above a little inter-screen rivalry – as Meet Mr Lucifer (1954) would prove).

Hawkins is next seen lying in the grass, firing a rifle. The link between the western and the narrative becomes clearer, particularly when the film cuts to Weech and Dan on the train, seemingly under fire. Dan picks up a gun, and starts shooting, and the film intercuts between the two scenes. But then we realise Hawkins is shooting at the water tower, and Dan is taking the opportunity to bag himself a pheasant: it is a nice piece of (genre-led) comic misdirection that shows particular skill on the part of Crichton and editor Seth Holt.

As ever with these films, there are more elements than I have time to really list here: the curious, often mocking, attitude the Ealing films take towards trade unions (the trade union representative here, Cloggett (Reginald Beckwith) is confused when he realises the proposed train crew would be management and labour at the same time); the float that Pearce & Crump produce that depicts a hospital operating theatre with ‘A victim of amateurism’ painted on it (which suggests a comment on the NHS?); the accuracy of the future imagined in Gordon’s impassioned plea of more concrete roads, traffic light, zebra crossings and houses with numbers and not names...

And, just to engage with Barr on this one more time, I’m not convinced the film is ‘slow, uncomplicated, and picturesque’ (Barr 1980, 162): the race between the bus and the train to the inquiry is fast-paced; the rush to collect water to prevent the train exploding is madcap and chaotic; while Valentine and Dan’s stolen train chase (crashing through a Guinness sign) is briskly edited (even if it does feel a little tangential to the main plot). The use of colour is also strong, and has firm narrative purpose, distinguishing between the bland cream bus and the gleaming red, green and gold of the Titfield Thunderbolt.

Next time: we go on the run with Alec Guinness in Ealing's science fiction-comedy The Man in the White Suit (1951)

The Great Ealing Film Challenge 18: The Feminine Touch (1956)

Director Pat Jackson made this, his only Ealing film, as the studio faced uncertain economic and creative straits, having sold their Ealing base to the BBC in 1955 (moving to Borehamwood instead), and with a new distribution agreement through MGM (not the more traditional Rank deal that had sustained them through the 1940s and early 50s). Ealing had also lost many of its established creative personnel, with Basil Dearden, Michael Relph, Charles Crichton and Alexander Mackendrick moving on to other projects, in British cinema and beyond. Jackson, a refugee documentarian who had flirted with Hollywood, had already explored similar health topics in White Corridors (1951), but this film differs from that earlier treatment by being more focused on the female experience of nursing. Yet despite its credentials as one of the few Ealing films to deal directly with a range of contemporary female issues (or, at least, those that relate to women in nursing and related work) the film arguably suffers from conflicting ideological positions around women, the workplace, and domestic responsibilities.

[As with Nicolas Nickleby, some of the following points and criticism may come from the source material, Sheila Mackay Russell’s book A Lamp is Heavy]

The film follows five student nurses from their arrival at St. Augustine’s Hospital (filmed at the real life Guy’s Hospital), through training, to their experiences in the first year of nursing. The film opens strongly, with Susan (Belinda Lee), Pat (Delphi Lawrence), Maureen (Adrienne Corri), Ann (Henryetta Edwards) and Liz (Barbara Archer) all thrown together in a dormitory. This section of the film has echoes back to British wartime films such as The Way Ahead (1944) and Millions Like Us (1943), with people from all walks of life (and class) forced to work together and find common ground. There is a strong scene of them arriving that defines their central characteristics: Susan is reliable and sensible, Pat is flighty and open, Maureen is Irish and loud, Ann is public school, Liz is working class. Watching them meet, unpack, unselfconsciously undress and put on their drab nurses’ outfits, demonstrates a solid core of burgeoning comradeship that the film will return to, albeit with less effect, throughout the plot.

The film is most interested in Susan, and her role within this group of women. She is often presented as a leader, but the film never offers any reason for this (beyond her being the main character). At times, she is visually isolated from the others, most notably in a scene where Ann and Pat threaten to resign: among a room of nurses, all bathed in the strong red-orange light of sunset, Susan is alone, sitting in a window, while the rest are gathered together on chairs and sofas in the centre of the room; the same scene shows she is uncertain about quitting, while the rest are aggrieved, protesting. However, she can also be shown within the group: a scene of the five women sitting on the edge of a bathtub, soaking their feet after another busy day on the ward, reemphasises how they draw on each other for support (the visuals are also strong here, with the camera occupying a point at the end of the bath that suggests the viewer is a sixth member of this group, part of the gang rather than an outsider).

The film has an obvious need to pair the female characters up with good-looking male doctors. The three male figures shown here (bar patients) are Dr. Jim Alcott (George Baker, from The Ship That Died of Shame), Dr. Ted Robinson (Christopher Rhodes), and the older hospital porter (Newton Blick) – whose role is largely to be a father figure who’ll help the girls and turn a blind eye to them going out partying beyond curfew. In many ways it seems churlish to complain about the romantic sub-plots, given the nurse-doctor romance narrative was hardly new in 1956, and has echoes in later hospital drama from er to Casualty. But here it actually takes away from any sense of the film dealing with the experience of female workers – rather than being a female version of, for example, Nine Men or The Cruel Sea, the central group is interesting less because of their interest in being strong and resourceful at their jobs and more about finding a man to marry, thus allowing them to quit their jobs.

And this isn’t my reading too much into the film: the final scenes of the film feature the Matron (Dian Wynyard), a character whose role throughout has largely been to give firm but understanding lectures, offering a homily to Susan and Pat that states they should leave nursing and abandon their qualifications, because finding love (particularly with a doctor) is a better option than finishing training and having a fulfilling career. After seventy minutes showing these young women struggling to overcome their obstacles at work, it feels glib to offer the solution that love trumps work. The film roots this denouement in nursing policy: married nurses are presumed to neglect their duty ‘because of a divided loyalty’ – although Susan does question the merit of nurses being allowed to have as many affairs as they want just so long as they are discreet and don’t get caught – but it does mean the film ends with Matron advising these two nurses (whom the film has asked us to invest in) to quit and – quite literally in the case of the final scene – end up in the arms of the doctor they love.

The film’s uncertainty over the place of romance is most plainly seen through Susan’s experience. Her relationship with Alcott moves in traditional romantic-comedy fits and starts: the victim of apparent competition with more experienced nurses, a missed date due to work, misunderstandings when Alcott is seen with another woman, disagreements over his treatment of patients, before eventual realisation and declaration of their feelings. This realisation pivots around two extended sequences: the first occurs in the children’s ward, where Alcott and Susan are looking after Jessie, a young girl with chronic heart disease. The debate here is around religion, notably Susan accusing Alcott of destroying Jessie’s faith in God because she knows ‘Uncle Jim’ (Jessie’s name for Alcott) doesn’t believe. Alcott initially rejects Susan’s concerns, but her intervention (and frankness) changes his mind, leading to a talk with Jessie on God and religion that suggests he does actually believe in something (which thus also paints him as suitable husband material): ‘we don’t understand radio and television, but they exist too... they only work if we let them, by turning on the sets.’ Yet this is also a scene that pulls its punches – Alcott’s lack of belief is never truly explored – and Susan is sidelined in the serious conversation, reduced to handing out orange juice to the kids while Alcott chats to Jessie. Susan is more central to the second pivotal scene, set during a nightshift, where she recognises a patient in trouble and calls Alcott to help him. Here, Susan and Alcott are presented in a more equal relationship, by her having proved her medical abilities: from this scene on, they are a couple, and Susan is planning to leave the service.

Yet the film has one last, curious, ‘romantic’ note to strike: Susan, writing her resignation letter on nightshift (this is a beautifully lit scene: a darkened ward of deep blue shadows, Belinda Lee sitting in a pool of light cast largely by a blue-shaded desk lamp), is called to an emergency case. The patient – bluntly described in the credits as ‘The Suicide’ (Dorothy Alison) – tells Susan her story of being in love with another man, running away from her husband (who gave her money when she left), and then being betrayed by her lover, who left her penniless. This long scene – largely shot in one take, with occasional cut-aways to close-ups of Susan – presents the moral, conservative, point of view (Susan states that going back to the husband is the only choice, not suicide), helps convince Susan to stay in nursing (for a few scenes at least, until Matron’s intervention), but also suggests the film’s larger theme that love or death are the only options open to women in the mid-1950s (with career a distant third).

Susan and Alcott are usefully contrasted with Pat and Dr Rhodes, where the emphasis appears to be on fun and sex, rather than medicine and romance: Pat (who notes early on that you can’t learn anatomy from books) regularly returns home late from dates, she is the most glamorous and outspoken of the girls (particularly in relation to men and sex), and on the one occasion when we see Pat and Rhodes out of the hospital, it is at a hectic and busy nightclub, with black musicians playing in the background, and native tribal designs painted on the walls. The broad strokes of the film show their relationship as unconventional and physical, while Susan and Alcott are all about unrequited glances and picnics on the riverbank: yet both women end up in the Matron’s office, giving up careers for their men.

Away from narrative and thematic concerns, The Feminine Touch does demonstrate some interesting (if subdued) uses of Technicolor. As with The Love Lottery, the quality of the print doesn’t really allow a comparison with how it might have looked in 1956, and often reduces rooms, costumes and ambience to brown-beige tones, with occasional colour highlights (notably red tones, or the blue uniforms of the nurses) breaking through. Yet there strong colour elements are still visible: bright red towels covering the trolley taking a sick boy to theatre, the blue tones of the night-time ward scenes, the red stripes on the sister’s uniforms. The film is also visually striking, using the kind of shadows the cinematographer Douglas Slocombe had previously identified as a strength of Technicolor. One scene in particular stands out here, when Susan is on nightshift and a patient is in trouble: the images of the ward are bathed in dark shadows, with only occasional highlights in lighter blues. Susan and Alcott walk to and from the bed in these shadows, only illuminated when the patient’s bedside lamp is switched on – and even then, they are half-lit, faces half or three-quarters in shadow.

The Feminine Touch, coming at a crossroads for Ealing Studios, may not have opened up a new successful strain of dramas, but it stands as one of the few Ealing films that engaged with female experience outside of supportive wife/daughter roles (we shall see some of the others in later blog posts). While that representation may be problematic in places, it shouldn’t take away from the fact that the film is dominated by strong, confident women in positions of authority, who are able to rely on each other, are seen as independent, and demonstrate skill at their profession.

[UPDATED April 2014: The Feminine Touch is now available as part of The Ealing Studios Rarities Collection, Volume 8, from Network]

Next time: more colourful action in The Titfield Thunderbolt (1953)...

The Great Ealing Film Challenge 17: Dead of Night (1945)

A special Halloween-inspired change to the advertised programme: my look at The Feminine Touch (1956) will appear later this week, but I thought it suitable (given the time of year) to spend some time on the supernatural side of Ealing’s output, best exemplified by this portmanteau treat from 1945.

Probably as true today as it was when Charles Barr noted it three decades ago, Dead of Night is ‘the Ealing film most frequently revived and remembered... after the comedies’ (Barr 1980, 55). The reason for its popularity is less certain, although regular screenings on television, its unusual generic status (for Ealing, at least), and its place as an early British horror, might all be seen as contributing factors. It was (again, after the comedies) one of the first Ealing films on DVD and (given the recent Blu-Ray release of films such as Kind Hearts and Coronets and Whisky Galore!) will likely appear on Blu-Ray before I make it to the end of my 95-film blog challenge!

How best to describe Dead of Night, then? It is a portmanteau (or ‘omnibus’) film, like Train of Events (1950) and other, later, British horror entries such as Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors (1965) and The House That Dripped Blood (1971): here, the narrative is based around a country house gathering where a group of friends meet an architect whose dreams/premonitions (and the doubting response from a psychiatrist) encourages them all to tell a story of their own brush with supernatural occurrences. The stories, as titled by Barr, include ‘A Christmas Story’ (directed by Alberto Cavalcanti, story by Angus Macphail), ‘Hearse Driver’ (directed by Basil Dearden, story by E.F. Benson), ‘The Haunted Mirror’ (directed by Robert Hamer, story by John V. Baines), ‘Golfing Story’ (directed by Charles Crichton, story by H.G. Wells) and ‘The Ventriloquist’s Dummy’ (directed by Cavalcanti, story by John V. Baines). Dearden and Benson also apparently directed and wrote the linking narrative, with T.E.B. Clarke providing additional dialogue. It is clear from that list that the film was drawing from almost all the big creative names at Ealing at the time, arguably fostering a creative one-upmanship that benefited the final film.

Discussions of the film tend to focus on two particular stories: ‘The Haunted Mirror’ (starring Googie Withers and Ralph Michael) and ‘Ventriloquist’s Dummy’ (starring Michael Redgrave and ‘Hugo’), yet this has the tendency to ignore the larger structure of the film, and the other equally-fascinating segments. Barr’s Ealing Studios, for example, focuses almost wholly on the Hamer-directed segment (and the thematic continuation he sees around Michael and Withers’ other Ealing films), ignoring the rest and dismissing the Redgrave section as ‘overrated.’

Watching this again (Dead of Night is one of the first films in this blog that I’ve seen several times before) I am struck by the strangeness of the structural narrative, and by its potent links to each of the individual stories. The performances of architect Walter Craig (Mervyn Johns) and psychiatrist Dr Van Stratten (Frederick Valk) are particularly noticeable, as it is their battle of wits and ideologies (belief versus science, fantasy versus rationality) that lies at the heart of the film. Johns has the harder role, in that he must move from confused and shaken to resolute and determined, before ultimately descending into madness: the success of the film (taken as a whole experience rather than its individual parts) rests largely on his shoulders.

The film builds slowly but efficiently, starting from the idea that Johns has dreamt about this meeting and these new people, with Van Stratten challenging that concept at every turn. The first two stories (‘Hearse Driver’ and ‘Christmas Story’) are brief but telling examples of the kind of supernatural fare the film will offer: ‘Hearse Driver’ continues the theme of premonition with a tale of racing driver Hugh Grainger (Anthony Baird), who ends up in hospital after a racing accident (a fairly gruesome piece of what, presumably, was found footage). One night, he has a vision of a horse-pulled hearse (and driver) who, smiling up at him, notes ‘just room for one inside, sir.’ On release from hospital, Grainger is about to board a bus when he sees the conductor is the same man as the hearse driver, who offers the same ‘just room for one inside, sir’ line. Grainger backs away in shock – then watches as a truck slams into the side of the bus, sending it crashing through barriers onto a railway track below (a nice piece of model work from Ealing’s special effects team). The story uses subtle but strong visual touches to convey its off-kilter tone: a series of long shots of Baird in bed, slow tracking shots in on him, long shadows cast across the room; music stabs on the reveal of the hearse, and a strong close-up to end the story, as Baird lowers his head, obscuring his face with the brim of his hat.

‘A Christmas Story,’ meanwhile, features the youngest of the country house gathering, Sally O’Hara (Sally Ann Howes), and her tale of a children’s Christmas party. Hiding during a game of sardines, she meets a frightened young boy called Francis Kent, who is scared of his sister. She puts him to bed and runs back out to meet the other children: only then is she told that Francis Kent was murdered years before by his sister, Constance. A short piece that is often seen as the slightest of the five stories (yet also the one that is most linked to a female protagonist), ‘A Christmas Story’ actually plays a vital role in confirming the larger themes present through the film: Sally has ‘seen’ something that others cannot (like Grainger in ‘Hearse Driver,’ Craig in the overarching story), her encounter is in relation to violent death (murder here, a violent accident in ‘Hearse Driver’), the encounter is signalled by becoming lost or isolated from others (here, through her passage into the labyrinthine areas of a huge country mansion: admirably conveyed through darkly-lit sets, and slightly skewed camera angles), and is linked to sexual or romantic activity (here, an older boy tells Sally horror stories in the hopes of getting a kiss from her).

All those elements are emphasised in the third story, ‘The Haunted Mirror,’ and its tale of socialite couple Joan (Googie Withers) and Peter Cortland (Ralph Michael). Joan, being part of the country house set, narrates her story and is particularly active throughout it, a detail that is often overlooked in favour of Peter’s descent into madness. The tale revolves around a gothic mirror that, when Peter looks into it, shows him in a completely different room: an ornate bedroom with huge four-poster bed, silk hangings, and roaring fire. This room is described as pulling him in, trying to ‘claim’ him, with something ‘monstrous’ on the other side. Joan discovers the mirror came from an arrogant violent man who, after being confined to bed, killed his wife in a jealous rage then cut his own throat – in front of the mirror. The film’s larger themes recur: Peter sees something no one else can, the event is murderous, he is isolated (both visually, in the mirror, and in the narrative, as Joan goes away for a weekend), and his increasing aggressive emotions are linked to sexual behaviour (the belief that Joan is cheating on him). The denouement of the story, with Peter attacking Joan – who gets a brief glimpse of them both reflected in the ‘other’ room in the mirror – solves the problem by Joan shattering the mirror, and relives Peter of blame by wiping his memory of it all. Barr sees this as a disappointing end, because it closes off any exploration of the ‘dark side’ and ‘otherness’ that the mirror offered in favour of the safety of Joan and Peter’s married life and the reassertion of them as a charming middle-class couple. (Barr 1980, 57) Yet separating the story out from the others ignores the darkness that slowly spreads through the whole film (it also ignores the unexplained fact that Joan is on her own at this country house gathering, with no sign of her husband): the individual story needs to be understood as one element of the bigger concerns around the ‘dark side’ that Dead of Night is dealing with.

However, that notion of darkness takes a curious tangent with ‘Golfing Story,’ the fourth story, and the most obviously comic of the tales. Indeed, Eliot Foley (Roland Culver) announces at its close that he was trying to lighten the mood: a possible ‘breaking the fourth wall’-style reference that suggests a deliberate awareness of how the film was structured, and how it was attempting to second-guess (and wrong-foot) its audience: earlier, one character had noted ‘It’s very disappointing not to be one of the characters in a sort of supernatural drama after all.’

Eliot’s story only features him in one scene, but tells about golfing legends and best friends George Parratt (Basil Radford) and Larry Potter (Naunton Wayne) who fall in love with the same woman (Mary Lee, played by Peggy Bryan) and decide to play a round of golf to decide who should ‘win’ her (perhaps the most curious aspect of this arrangement is that Mary seems satisfied with it all). The golf game comes down to the final hole: Barratt wins and Potter, deflated, walks off the green, straight into a lake, and drowns (a particularly atmospheric image, with the lake reflecting the trees all around it, and Wayne being consumed by that reflective surface). Potter comes back as a ghost to haunt Parratt (who cheated) – a sequence where the film demonstrates more special effects in the form of floating and animated golf balls – as the film reframes Parratt in light of the earlier characters: the only one who can ‘see’ the death-linked supernatural element, its link to sexual attraction around Mary, and Parratt’s increasingly isolation. However, when Potter forgets his ghostly training, and can’t disappear, the comedy moves into Parratt’s inability to kiss or make love to his new wife with Potter hovering nearby. The story ends abruptly –Parratt magically disappears, leaving Potter with his prize – Mary, in bed on her wedding night, calling to her husband.

It can be argued that ‘Golfing Story’ is a necessary lighter element before the final story, and the final resolution of the framing story. ‘The Ventriloquist’s Dummy’ may not always live up to its reputation – the double-framing device (Van Stratten initially narrates the story, then Sylvester Kee – Hartly Power – takes over) isn’t completely successful, but the haunted and committed performance of Michael Redgrave playing ventriloquist Maxwell Frere easily explains much of the acclaim. It blends elements of concepts around schizophrenia with possessed puppets, and never explains whether Hugo the dummy is supernatural or if it is all in Frere’s mind. The story begins in the shadows of a police interview room, and ends in the brighter setting of a psychiatric ward, while individual scenes place Frere and Hugo in the shadows: Frere, in bed, Hugo’s profile in shadow on the right of screen; Frere’s face obscured in shadow as he demands to see Hugo. There are also more showy camera tricks: losing focus as Kee backs away; the image spinning as he loses consciousness. Yet, watching this again, what actually struck me was nothing to do with the central plot, but the presence of black singer Elizabeth Welch during the nightclub scene where Frere (and Hugo) first meet Kee. It is noticeable (albeit not part of the larger supernatural plot) partly because of the inclusion of a musical sequence, and partly Welch’s presence in the second Ealing genre film studied in this blog (she appears in Fiddlers Three as a singer in Nero’s court).

Unfortunately, although fascinating in its own right (two appearances in a short time, then nothing else), Welch’s presence has little relevance to the film’s conclusion, as Craig’s premonition becomes ‘real,’ and the film pulls from all of its shorter narratives (although there is little here from ‘Golfing Story’) to stress the dreamlike and repetitive qualities of its structure. Back in the country house, and back to Walter Craig and Dr Van Stratten, as the final element of Walter’s premonition – the doctor’s glasses breaking – comes true. Earlier van Stratten had noted that he felt like a puppet, with Mr Craig ‘pulling the strings’ (a useful link to Hugo), but as the plot comes together, we realise that we have all been pulled along, the whole plot being another repetition of the dream Craig has been describing. As van Stratten’s glasses break, and he accepts Craig’s story, something breaks in Craig. The lighting in the main living room darkens, and the film cuts to a long deep focus shot of the whole room, with Craig in extreme foreground, van Stratten in the background. Through a series of reverse shots and the camera tracking back, Craig gives in to his psychosis (Johns shows us both the struggle and the grateful acceptance of madness) as he strangles van Stratten – and descends into a kaleidoscope of images from each individual story: playing hide and seek with Sally, next to Peter and looking into the mirror, herded along by a guard (who looks like the hearse driver), then thrown in a prison cell with Hugo... and as Hugo comes alive and pounces on Craig, the camera pulls back, and back, and back – that rectangular image shrinking into the centre of  screen...

Following Barr’s logic would suggest that the film contains the darkness by destroying those implements that give us access (the mirror, Hugo): yet, as Craig wakes up from this horrible dream, and drives down to the country for an appointment with Eliot Foley, the darkness is still ahead of him, still potent, and still unconstrained. Rather than defying and controlling these elements, it seems to me that the film is eager for us to keep exploring them.

The Great Ealing FIlm Challenge 16: The Ghost of St Michael's (1941)

Not a film about Will Hay haunting a branch of Marks and Spencer’s (which could have been amusing) but a more standard comedy-thriller that, after The Black Sheep of Whitehall (1942), makes it clearer to me why Hay had a following in the 1940s (and in decades since). This film offers a stronger sense of his particular star image and appeal, and is, I think, a better example of the humour Hay was known (and popular) for with British audiences.

Here, the set-up is that retired schoolteacher Lamb (Hay) has come out of retirement during wartime to take up a position at a boy’s school that has relocated its students to a remote Scottish castle. At the castle, Lamb has to deal with spooky servant James (a fabulous performance from John Laurie), and his pronouncements about ghostly spirits and apparitions (particularly the tragic figure of the Mad Mackinnon), a class of unruly and intelligent boys led by Percy Thorne (future Carry On stalwart Charles Hawtrey), and the murder of several of his teaching colleagues. The denouement of who the killer is, and why they did it, is immaterial (and, frankly, feels like a tagged-on wartime necessity) but – unlike Black Sheep – that doesn’t get in the way of Hay’s comic turn as a bumbling, blundering idiot.

Like Black Sheep, there are several strong comedy set-ups but the down-side to that is that the film is visually quite basic, with the emphasis on Hay’s visual/verbal performance (and that of the supporting actors) rather than any distinctive camerawork or editing. The film is, however, completely set-bound with no external shooting, but the range of sets are, frankly, astonishing in their scale and range – if Ealing built these castle sets just for this film (rather than using pre-existing sets from another film – and there is no obvious contender in the films produced in 1941/42) it suggests a priority given to Hay’s star vehicle that wasn’t evident in Black Sheep. The size of the sets is impressive, with little apparent use of matte work or back projection (apart from some early shots on board a ship which emphasise, again, the strength of Ealing’s model work). Although initially the deserted castle / remote-island setting seems immaterial to the plot, it becomes more central in the final section, with hidden passages, booby-trapped rooms and battlement-set denouement.

The ‘Scottish-ness’ of the film (for wont of a better term) is up for grabs, but it is an early example of Ealing using Scottish actors and locations in their comedies (even if this fictional creation has little resemblance to the actual Isle of Skye – particularly the court case being held in an animal-infested barn – later Ealing ‘Scottish’ films such as Whisky Galore! and The Maggie are more subtle comic portraits and much more reliant on location shooting than the artificial Scotland created here). As mentioned above, John Laurie is a stand-out performance here, with his doom-laden pronouncements of supernatural horror and dread offering a potent link to his later appearance in Dad’s Army. It is also interesting to see another Ealing film (after The Ship That Died of Shame and Dead of Night – predictably scheduled to appear in the blog around Halloween) flirting with the supernatural – even if the supernatural elements ultimately have a prosaic wartime explanation. It also links the portrayal of Celtic nations to larger thematic conventions around fate, ghosts and fantasy elements that are clear in other British films of the period (most notably I Know Where I’m Going (1944).

Despite all these other elements, the film is obviously all about Hay, as his attempts at teaching cause chaos, misunderstanding, and (after several murders), disastrous attempts at crime-solving. However, Hay’s performance works largely because of the competent straight men he bounces off: Hawtrey feels like a cross between a St Trinian’s girl and his later Carry On persona and, like John Mills in Black Sheep, is largely there to move the plot on (and, given Hays largely plays the fool, to offer relevant links and clues to the audience). Hawtrey also feels like an early example of the ‘Ealing kid’ – the self-aware, confident, cocky youngster who (in later films such as Hue & Cry and The Magnet) is capable of driving their own comedy-thriller plot). Traditionally a male role (there are few strong female children in Ealing’s films), the class of public schoolboys in Black Sheep inevitably save the day despite the best efforts of their teachers. Hawtrey, as the most plot-driven character, also has a nice line in mocking American crime offerings – his inspiration for crime-solving is a pulp fiction paperback My Aunt Lies Bleeding – while there is some sub-CSI comedy forensics when he tries to demonstrate to Hay and friends how to use science to investigate crime.

Mr Humphries (Raymond Huntley) offers an early interpretation of his later Passport to Pimlico character, officious and pompous in equal measure (although his character’s murder does unfortunately take away some of the stronger character work between him and Hay). As in Black Sheep, the script (written by Angus MacPhail and John Dighton), is at its best when it doesn’t get in the way of Hay’s comedy business, and flounders most when it tries to create coherent plot motivations or mystery – the revelation of the wartime context of foreign spies and secret submarine rendezvous feels unnecessary, but does tie the film into contemporary awareness of using film as a propaganda weapon – if this double-bill has proven anything, it is that popular Will Hay films were as likely to deal with ideas around the ‘enemy within’ and the notion of a unified Britain (where everyone was capable of pitching in to fight the war) as any government sponsored documentary or the more artistically inclined work of Powell & Pressburger.

The film has one final, curious note, one that offers a convenient gender-based link to the next film for the blog, The Feminine Touch (1956). Like Black Sheep, Ghost of St Michael's is a very male-driven film, with almost all characters teachers, schoolboys, faithful retainers and legal types. The school matron, Mrs Wigmore (Elliot Mason), therefore, is immediately incongruous, given her female status among all those men. That (and consider this your spoiler warning) she turns out to be the traitor betraying the country to the Germans (instead of the obvious red herring 'foreign accented' teacher) is curious for a number of reasons: she's barely in the film (there is an early scene of her treating Hay), we learn nothing about her (apart from the fact she is obviously evil, being a traitor), and (as noted above) the whole secret submarine signalling sub-plot seems so immaterial I doubt audiences would care who the traitor was, just so long as Hay fell over a lot en route to unmasking them.

It is a strange, jarring, narrative detail that lingers after the film is over and (as evidenced in other posts) continues to make me curious about the larger role of women in the Ealing Studios canon... something we will continue to explore in The Feminine Touch...



The Great Ealing Film Challenge 15: The Black Sheep of Whitehall (1942)

While watching this Will Hay-starring comedy, I was reminded of the different release strategies that companies take when releasing British Cinema films on DVD, particularly the decisions made by Studio Canal UK / Optimum Releasing when selecting and packaging the Ealing Studios DVDs I’m currently watching. From the on-screen menus (and some quick internet research) it is clear this disc was originally part of The Will Hay Collection, but has also been subsequently re-packaged in the colours and branding of the Ealing Studios Collection. This slightly schizophrenic double-life appears to be replicated in the film itself, however, which doesn’t feel as coherent as some of the earlier and later Ealing comedies I’ve seen, but equally doesn’t feel completely like a strong ‘Will Hay’ film either.

The film does not, for example, match any of the thematic conventions of the ‘Ealing comedy’ that Charles Barr starts to sketch out: notably issues around quality versus quantity, small being beautiful, large and corporate being ugly. This knockabout comedy, with its South American spy thriller undertones, cross-dressing, slapstick and actorly mugging, is a different beast to the post-war comedies that tend to feature under that studio comedy brand. Indeed, Barr has little time for the pre-1948 comedies, those featuring Will Hay, George Formby and Tommy Trinder, despite this film (and The Goose Steps Out, 1942) being co-directed by Basil Dearden, one of Michael Balcon’s stalwart lieutenants during his time at Ealing. In that sense, these films (particularly those of Formby and Hay) are often seen as star-driven vehicles rather than true ‘Ealing’ films (despite the inherent vagueness and uncertainty over exactly what that term means).

The film is not coy about its star-laden qualities, opening with a ‘Will Hay in...’ title, featuring the star as five different ‘characters’ (in effect, one character who adopts four disguises), and building almost all the set pieces around Hays’ brand of verbal and visual humour. Despite this, however, the film feels too beholden to its mistaken identity-wartime spy plot to give Hay the opportunity to really let rip, and the accompanying ‘trade agreement’ narrative feels very staid and bland, hard to enliven even with Hay’s blustering and an anarchic car chase.

The film is about Davis (Hay), an actor-turned-bad educator, whose pursuit of a broken contract with Jessop (John Mills) leads him to the Ministry of International Commerce where a conference on South American trade is awaiting the arrival of British expert Professor Davys (Henry Hewitt). Davys is kidnapped by enemy agents, and replaced by Crabtree (Felix Aylmer), who intends to sabotage British trade agreements in concert with journalist / spy Costello (Basil Sydney). Following a mistaken identity incident around Davis / Davys, Jessop realises the ‘real’ Prof. Davys has been kidnapped and blackmails Davis into helping him track down and rescue the real professor, thus saving the conference and the country.

It is enjoyable to see a young John Mills caught up in the chaos, essentially playing a straight man to Hay’s mad professor, and bullying Hay into various disguises (Scotland Yard detective, hotel porter, train ticket collector, and female nurse) in their joint pursuit of the Nazi spies who are trying to derail the conference. Mills plays Jessop as young, cocky, and confident – he’s no simple stooge, operating as the main vehicle for pushing the plot forward – and is a nice contrast to the sometimes stuffy Hay. The other characters / supporting actors are solid, but few stand out – although Costello does have a fun recurring joke in that he half-recognises Davis/Hay in all his disguises, but assumes it is some incredibly vast family he keeps running into.

There are nice visual gags scattered through the film (a man helps Hay into his coat and hat, before repossessing the hat stand they were hanging on; the delivery boy who gets so sick of being knocked off his bike during the car chase that he throws his packages on the ground for the spies to drive over) but the slapstick can also feel forced, notably in the lengthy care home sequence where Hay’s cross-dressing as a nurse leads to entirely predictable results (prefiguring Carry on Doctor by almost two decades!), or the lengthy car chase sequence that makes up the final 10-15 minutes of the film (and which ends with a largely unrelated bomb explosion). What makes the final sequence so interesting is it is obviously where the film’s (limited?) budget went, as it is the only section filmed outside – elsewhere, the plot bounces from set to set, using back projection for scenes on a train (and, to be fair, for several of the car chase scenes as well), but here, there is actual outdoor filming at the nursing home, and in many of the car-based chase gags. This is less a criticism (particularly as this is mainly noticeable because of the location-heavy filming I’ve seen in later Ealing films) more an interesting note that might relate to the limited budget such films had to play with in the early 1940s.

The film also features a dramatisation of the rival medium of radio, notably the recording of a BBC Home Service interview where Hay prattles on about economics, unaware he’s been mistaken for the real Professor Davys. This interview is conducted by real BBC presenter Leslie Mitchell, host of BBC TV show Picture Page, but is obviously a set piece for Hay’s bluster and surreal response to questions about economics. What is most curious, apart from a possible dig at the BBC being unprepared, is that both Mitchell and the engineer faint and collapse during the interview, for no apparent reason. (presumably exhausted by Hay's never-ending stream of consciousness chatter)

As is probably obvious, I wasn’t completely convinced by this film – it isn't a strong performance from Hay, and the plot-heavy nature of the film detracts from the occasionally funny verbal back-and-forth and visual routine-based comedy that I think would shine in other situations (the plot is also a little dull, and has a curiously leaden pace). The title is also a little misleading – maybe I was expecting some kind of civil service/governmental slapstick, instead of this wartime spy thriller-comedy.

However, as it would be unfair to dismiss Hay based on this one outing, I’ve decided to go for a Hay double bill: watch out early next week for a post on his earlier Ealing hit, The Ghost of St. Michael’s (1941)...

The Great Ealing Film Challenge 14: Another Shore

This Dublin-set story of fate/kismet contains several elements that could form a strong comedy but it is almost fatally let down by casting. It would be unfair to put all the blame for this film on the shoulders of Robert Beatty but, after this and Against the Wind, I’m ready to call him as Ealing’s least convincing recurring leading man. (it will be interesting to see if that continues in Out of the Clouds, 1955, and The Gentle Gunman, 1952)

Here his performance hamstrings the film from the start by playing against the inherent whimsy of the central concept. Gulliver Shields (Beatty) is an ex-civil servant who dreams of living the easy life on South Seas island Raratonga: instead of saving money to fund this dream, Gulliver has decided that fate (the ‘wings of circumstance’) will provide, and has taken to sitting on a park bench in the hope of becoming a good Samaritan to an old wealthy person. After learning that someone had already achieved this aim using the exact same park bench, Gulliver moves his pitch to a corner of busy Grafton Street, in hopes of helping out at a traffic accident. Even describing that scenario points out the absurdity at the heart of the narrative, but Gulliver’s quirks could work given the right actor, particularly someone who could elicit sympathy for the character’s inherently unlikeable scheme or offer a more surreal take on Gulliver’s eccentricities.

Beatty is, however, adrift and appears to have had little guidance from director Charles Crichton. He plays Gulliver as short-tempered, aloof and distant, obsessed with Raratonga, but without the edge of eccentricity or charm that the part calls for (although, given the film is an adaptation, it is possible this is a perfectly solid interpretation of the character: for the film, however, the performance never achieves the lightness of touch that the comic moments seem to call for). While he conveys the rootless, lonely aspects of Gulliver, Beatty cannot reveal the character’s supposed charms. Because this is not simply a comedy, but a romantic comedy, where (it is assumed) the audience is supposed to root for the central relationship between Gulliver and Jennifer (Moira Lister).

This romantic focus is signalled in a cute title sequence that sums up many of the film’s central conceits: after the film’s title, a female hand writes ‘A Comedy,’ and a male hand crosses that out and writes ‘A Tragedy’; next, both hands write at once (already signalling that some romantic rapprochement is possible), and reveal the film is ‘A Tragi-Comedy of Dublin Life.’ Yet the tragic tone is offset here (as it is elsewhere) by an upbeat orchestral version of Irish tune ‘Molly Malone’ (more commonly known – to me, at least – as ‘Cockles and Muscles’).

To move away from Beatty towards the film’s more positive attributes, the most obvious is his better half in the romance and comedy departments: Moira Lister. I said earlier that The Ship That Died of Shame was the kind of Ealing film I had hoped to find, surprising and challenging my idea of the studio’s output. Lister has been a similar ‘find,’ in that her performances have now brightened several films on the list that, otherwise, didn’t quite work for me: Jo in A Run for Your Money (a role I described as the ‘stand-out performance... energetic [and] bright’), and Elaine Morell in The Cruel Sea (brief but memorable as Denholm Elliot’s unfaithful actress wife). I’m only sorry to note that she only appears in one other Ealing other film on the list, Pool of London (1951), but I can imagine searching out some of her other roles in the future, notably White Corridors (1951) and the Norman Wisdom comedy Trouble in Store (1953).

In Another Shore Lister is, again, the highlight of the film: her flighty but determined Jennifer is a society girl who meets Gulliver on a beach and, intrigued, proceeds to pursue him through the streets of Dublin. In the absence of any real arc for Gulliver (he is an inactive character, waiting for events to happen to him), Jennifer instigates most of the action, romance and comedy of the film. Lister enhances what could be a thin role – the posh society girl who takes a shine to an unlikely man – and makes Jennifer a fallible but engrossing character. She is independent, regularly tipsy (though happy and in control), and gleefully seductive when faced with the problem of Gulliver – forcing him to accompany her home, laying her head in his lap (a fairly brazen act in an Ealing film), accusing him of being ghoulish, initiating the first of several kisses (‘can islands kiss like that?’), and taking control of his life when fate thrusts them together in exactly the kind of car crash he’s been waiting for. Perhaps the only negative perspective on Jennifer is that she pulls Gulliver away from his dreams and back to the real world – she is always the voice that intrudes on his daydreams – but the film as a whole suggests this is necessary. Given her earlier claim that he should ‘marry a rich girl instead, it’s simpler,’ there is no suggestion that Gulliver’s life is tragic by losing out on Raratonga, given the headstrong and attractive charms of Jennifer.

[Actually, given how hard I’ve been on Beatty, I should note that the scene on New Year’s Eve between him and Lister does go a long way to selling the transition in Gulliver: it is also a visually strong scene, with cinematographer Douglas Slocombe opting for dark shadows and graphic compositions as they walk through darker alleyways and through a carnival replete with spinning carousels and rides. The mix of camerawork, editing and soundtrack (there is little dialogue, the growing relationship between Gulliver and Jennifer is sold mainly through the acting), particularly the rising pace that is created, suggests a passion being awoken in Gulliver that challenges his earlier ideas of what fate and kismet could bring him. It is a solid piece of acting from Beatty – and Lister – which further suggests light comedy is not his forte]

Visually, the film features other strong moments: at various points, Dublin’s statues (normally a montage of Molly Malone and others) loom over the narrative, seeming to comment on Gulliver’s actions like a silent chorus; alongside the expected Ealing strength in location filming there are strong fantasy images where Gulliver’s dreams of Raratonga are given life (pristine beaches, palm trees and (for some reason) Gulliver in a loincloth with a spear); and a nice creative use of soundtrack – the traffic noises of Dublin are used early on to show Gulliver’s distaste for the city and desire for island life, they become central to his plans (waiting for an accident) and, by the end, those same traffic noises confirm that he is still in Dublin, and still with Jennifer.

Overall, then, like some of the other less successful Ealing films I’ve watched, there are moments that work well but the comedy cannot grasp the inherently surreal and whimsical notions that lie at the heart of the narrative. With The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), The Titfield Thunderbolt (1953) and The Love Lottery (1954) ahead in his Ealing filmography, director Charles Crichton would obviously become more capable of combining strong performances with whimsy and character.

Next time: the start of a Will Hays double bill in The Black Sheep of Whitehall (1942)...