LAST NIGHT, while bored and nothing on TV I took to YouTube and the internet for some film I could save for times like this and even with hundreds of channels to view. I end up checking films made by Ealing Studios where many a British classics film was made.
I was drawn towards the 1947 film “Hue and Cry” and some good old boys own stuff. Looking at other films made that year there was the fantastic “Frieda” about a German woman marrying an RAF pilot after the war and coming to England. Another film and equally as good” It Always Rains on Sunday” starring (Googie Withers) as a former barmaid married to a middle-aged man who has two teenage daughters from a previous marriage. Her former lover/boyfriend, escapes from prison and seeks her out for help and I would highly recommend them both if you get the chance to see them.
Back then and when I was growing up in the sixties and early seventies comics were the king most kids read them I know I did and that gives us the start of the plot of the film, comics.
Hue and Cry centres on the young Joe Kirby played by Harry Fowler who with a gang of kids who play in and around the bomb sites of London. Jack Warner he of 'Dixon of Dock Green' where he was later to play a loveable copper is the baddie in this film. The Crooks were passing information between each other via a boy’s comic strip the smart Joe stumbles on to it even going to the police but no one believes him.
On unmasking this plot, when Joe unknowingly, trusts Warner who then kidnaps him, the chums manage to 'shanghai' a radio station microphone and set out the call: "Calling all boys - go to (Can't remember location!) for an adventure!" the next scene shows boys dropping everything - literally, the boy drops his mum's shopping, another's about to kiss a girl and runs off, etc.! Excellent scene! It turns out one of the comic's staff was obviously in on it.
There's a nice scene where the boys tie up one of the baddies, and set out to torture her for the information - this isn't as bad as it sounds, they can't really bring themselves to be vicious, so she's seen being tickled by a feather on her feet! Not impressed or bothered at all, one of the boys brings out his mouse - and 'being a woman', she squeals in more ways than one! Although that sounds like an easy scene it was quite amusing!
The 'boys' who do have a girl among them she is trying hard to be accepted by the boys.
There is the larger than life Alistair Sim to provide that added dimension of playful eccentricity in the person of the innocent writer who is completely unaware of the use to which his stories are being put. It all leads via a scene in the London sewers, predating "The Third Man", to the glorious climax where all the boys of the capital and one girl descend, quite literally in one case, on the baddies. And what better to round it all off than a shot of angelic choirboys, bandaged, black eyed and gap toothed, singing "Wings of a Dove!"
No comments:
Post a Comment