Hue and Cry (1947) - film review

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...

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

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