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MovieMail's Review
"We made films at Ealing that were good, bad and indifferent, but they were indisputably British. They were rooted in the soil of the country." (Michael Balcon)
Ealing Studios is, deservedly, most famous for its purple patch of 'comedies' from Passport to Pimlico and Whisky Galore! in 1949 through to The Ladykillers in 1955. In their scripting, acting and cinematography, they are peerless British productions. Certainly, all of the themes that the phrase 'Ealing comedy' generally connotes are here - the small man's struggle against impersonal authority, the championing of the local, the experiments in benign anarchy - but there is much more to the films than these shorthand phrases allow.
Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) always will be beautifully wicked. Its script is superb - articulate, cynical, amoral, and is matched by Dennis Price's barbed narration of his tale. Scenes are framed with a sensitive eye too - one that recognises how to effectively reinforce the underlying messages of the film without being too precious about it. This is a noticeable trait in the films that share Douglas Slocombe as their Director of Photography and is an area that usually goes under-remarked in discussions of Ealing's output.
The studios didn't just produce comedies of couse. There's Cavalcanti's Went the Day Well? (1942), one of the most effective wartime films, conceived to highlight the dangers of a Nazi invasion. Then there's Robert Hamer's bleak social drama, It Always Rains on a Sunday (1947) and Charles Frend's paean to British pluck, Scott of the Antarctic (1948). The studios were also responsible for one of the truly effective pre-Hammer British horror films, the portmanteau film of supernatural tales Dead of Night (1945) which carries an edge of dread throughout. The hints of sexual repression in Hamer's The Haunted Mirror section are especially noteworthy.
Go to the films themselves; there's always more there to be discovered.
A wonderful collection of 16 films featuring the cream of Ealing Studios, the company that produced many of the best cinematic works ever made in the UK. Includes Champagne Charlie, Dead Of Night, Hue & Cry, It Always Rains On Sunday, Kind Hearts And Coronets, The Ladykillers, The Lavender Hill Mob, The Maggie, The Magnet, The Man In The White Suit, Nicholas Nickelby, Passport To Pimlico, Scott Of The Antarctic, The Titfield Thunderbolt, Went The Day Well and Whisky Galore.
