I see the Channel Gold are showing a tribute to the very British Ealing Comedies and of course, my memory was stirred about the films I like and would recommend. Worthy of viewing at any opportunity are the films below.
The Studios are linked with many a British classic film produced in the post-WWII years and during the war a mainstay of feel good propaganda films.It has been at the centre of the British film industry for more than a century.
The Proud Valley (1940)
The film stars the African-American actor Paul Robeson as a beached seaman who looking for work try’s his luck in the South Wales coalfield, main coal mining region of Wales.
After hearing his singing voice from outside the window while conducting his male voice choir in rehearsal, Mr. Parry (Edward Chapman) manages to convince David (Robeson) to sing in his choir and gets him a job at the mines where he also works. Despite being a black man, almost everyone accepts him and he is soon a valued member of the community.
The big scene comes just after his friend has been killed in a mining accident. At the local Eisteddfod Robeson gets up and sings "Deep River" which sends shivers down the spine and the tears come rolling down the cheeks. With the mine unworkable, the workers march to London to force the owners to reopen it. They agree and we have a self-sacrifice end to the movie where David (Robeson) knocks out the young miner and essentially commits suicide by setting off an explosion that clears an opening to the mine, while he predictably dies in the blast.
Off screen Robeson developed a long-standing affinity with the people of Welsh valleys which lasted throughout his lifetime, and this was the one film he made of which he was truly proud.
The Foreman Went to France (1942)
Clifford Evans plays an industrial foreman sent to France in 1940 to retrieve three "special-purpose machines" before the invading Germans can get their hands on them.
He journeys on to the town where the machines are and meets secretary Constance Cummings, an American who is destroying classified documents. She agrees to serve as his translator to get the machines to the coast. They enlist the aid of two British soldiers, Tommy Trinder (four stars for him alone as the comedy relief) and Gordon Jackson who have a British army lorry to transport the machines along the way they pick up six war orphans, and a nun.
They are strafed by German fighters, attacked by German dive-bombers, fight through German infantry, and shoot their way out of a German-held château. More sinister in a way are their encounters with fascists, collaborators, and fifth columnists.
Frieda (1947)
The film begins in the latter part of WWII with a British flier Robert played by (David Farrar) escapes from a German POW camp thanks to the help of a young German woman Frieda played by (Mai Zetterling). In gratitude for her help, he decides to take her from war-damaged Germany to his home to a small English town and asks her to marry him.
Surprisingly, she is not welcomed with open arms by the locals and the Farrar family are not welcoming either leading to tensions to the marriage. The arrival of her brother (a former German soldier) who she thought was killed in the war doesn’t help.
However, a trip to the local cinema shows Frieda & Robert the bitter truth about Belsen in the newsreels, which then have a sobering effect on their relationship. Her brother told her he served on the side of the allies in the Polish army but shows is true colours when he presses a pendant swastika into his sister's hand at her wedding rehearsal.
One memorable scene comes when a facially disfigured British army survivor who knows Richard from his short time in a concentration camp before being transferred to a proper P.O.W camp and is outed as a Nazi. This incident in a pub ignites a physical confrontation between Robert and Richard in which Frieda’s brother ends up dying. Frieda racked with guilt tries to kill herself in the local river but saved by Robert.
I hope the film gets an airing during Channel Gold’s are tribute to Ealing Studios by this is not a comedy. More than worth a watch if you can.
It Always Rains on Sunday (1947)
Ealing Studios are chiefly remembered for their string of classic comedies but they also put out several notable pictures in other genres. The plot to this film is a solid drama that captures the mood of post war London. Googie Withers plays an embittered housewife leading a drab life who married an older man for all the wrong reasons. Her world comes crashing down around her when a former lover turns up on the run after escaping from prison with the police on his tail.
He demands food and shelter until he can skip the country so she hides him in her bedroom. However, it proves extremely difficult to keep the presence of the escapee a secret in such a busy, bustling household – particularly with her former lover intent on seducing her. Her much older husband and her 'new' family, two rebellious stepdaughters and an adolescent son see to that. Each are having problems of their own and their constant comings-and-goings in the house during this particular Sunday (the film is set all in one day) makes it hard to get her guest out of the house.
It’s not helped by the police coming a calling it was causing intolerable pressure as the day progresses. A newspaper reporter interrupts them, as Tommy is about to flee, and soon tips off the police. With night, falling her secret is out and a panic-stricken Rose (Withers) tries to gas herself, while the prisoner is cornered and arrested. Rose is in hospital recovering, and reconciles with her husband, who then returns alone to their home.
The Divided Heart (1954)
This is a tearjerker! A touching and often very moving account of a 10-year-old boy who at the age of three was adopted during World War II by a German couple. No family can be traced, and it is presumed that his parents and siblings have been casualties of war. For the next 7 years, he was loved, given the name, Toni.
With his family he lived in a Bavarian Alpine village where Toni, an intelligent and sensitive lad, enjoy all things German goes to school, enjoys skiing, and could not be any happier with lots of friends. However, his world is turned upside down at his 10th birthday party when a man and a woman from the International Refugee Organization interrupt it.
Toni is in fact Ivan Slavko, a Yugoslav, and his mother Sonja is alive and wants her son back after surviving the war as a refugee having lost her husband and two other children in the war. She never gave up on Toni/Slavko. The moral dilemma of the film was not unfamiliar at the end of the war with so many displace adults and children. Should he remain with his adoptive parents or his natural mother who is a stranger to him it was left to the court a post-war U.S. Court of the Allied High Commission for Germany to determine justice, a justice that accompanied by injustice to either real or adoptive parents.
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