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Hue and Cry
1947 Adventure / Comedy / Crime / Thriller
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Credits
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Director: Charles Crichton
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Script: T.E.B. Clarke
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Photo: Douglas Slocombe
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Music: Georges Auric
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Cast: Alastair Sim (Felix H. Wilkinson),
Jack Warner (Nightingale),
Harry Fowler (Joe Kirby),
Jack Lambert (Ford),
Douglas Barr (Alec),
Joan Dowling (Clarry),
Valerie White (Rhona),
Ian Dawson (Norman),
Gerald Fox (Dicky),
David Simpson (Arthur),
Albert Hughes (Wally)
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Country: UK
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Language: English
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Runtime: 82 min; B&W
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Summary
Joe Kirby, a 15 year-old lad living in London’s East End, has a passion
for adventure stories. When he notices the similarity between a
car parked in the street with one he has and seen in his favourite
comic, he suspects foul play is afoot. He confides in Inspector
Ford, but the latter puts this down to an overactive imagination and
finds the boy a job in Covent Garden. However, Joe is convinced
that someone is using the comic to convey coded messages. With
his gang of friends he sets out to capture a band of crooks...
Review
Filmed in the bomb-scarred East End of London a year after the end of
WWII, Hue and Cry was the
first of the famous Ealing comedies, a series of internationally
renowned popular film comedies made by Ealing Studios in the 1940s and
1950s. The impact of the war is shown not just in the film’s
sobering location, but in the games the children play and in their
adventurous spirit. This was the generation that, mercifully,
just missed having to fight in the war.
The film is a charming concoction of farce and thriller, in pretty much
the manner of a Boy’s Own
adventure. Most of the parts are played by children, led by Harry
Fowler as Joe - he had appeared in an earlier Ealing production, Went the Day Well? (1942).
Director Charles Crichton was keen that the film should have a strong
sense of realism and so only hired working class children with
recognisable accents (mostly London, but one Scot).
Playing the lead villain, one of the few adult parts in the film, was
Jack Warner. He would later become famous as PC George Dixon in
another Ealing classic, The Blue Lamp
(1950) and its long-running BBC TV spin-off, Dixon of Dock Green. The most
memorable performance is Alastair Sim’s gloriously over-the-top
portrayal of a writer of childrens’ comics - although he only appears
in a couple of scenes.
The film’s screenwriter Tibby Clarke, a former journalist, was
significant contributor to the Ealing comedies. He worked on a
further six Ealing films, including Passport to Pimlico (1949) and The Lavender Hill Mob (1951).
Clarke's great flair for scripting comic situations is abundently apparent in
Hue and Cry, a film that continues to have a strong appeal for both
adults and children.
© James Travers 2008
For World Cinema on DVD...
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