Passport to Pimlico (1949)

 "Blimey! I'm a foreigner!"

It's ridiculous that I hadn't seen this iconic Ealing comedy until last night but, well, now I have. And it's brilliant, obviously. But it wasn't quite what I expected. And I'm not just talking about the scene with a pig in a parachute..

This is very visibly and very deliberately set in a post-war London of rationing and bomb sites. An unexploded bomb looms large. There are constant references to the privations the characters all went through a few years earlier. In the late 1940s, this is what it means to be British... and yet, the characters are all fun, quick-witted, likeable and enjoying life regardless. This is not the privately educated England of the stiff upper lip, but the real England of beer and belly laughs.

...Until it isn't. The central conceit is that, suddenly, this little street on Pimlicois in fact, legally, a random surviving remnant of the Duchy of Burgundy, with a descendant of Charles the Bold as its sovereign. The film plays, for laughs of course, all the difficulties ofva community finding itself as a microstate, with no pre-existing law, government, police, armed forces or foreign relations. Indeed, the film gets surprisingly abstract and philosophical as it humorously examines the very concept of nationhood. It's a nice touch that the microstate enjoys a massive heatwave while it's Burgundyy but, as soon as it's British again, the heavens open...

The cast is superb. Stanley Holloway is perfect, a strikingly young Charles Hawtrey has a memorable role, but for me it's Margaret Rutherford's eccentric professor who stealds the show. This is a fine little comedy but also quietly intelligent in its themes, and a fascinating little time capsule.

The Third Man (1949)

"In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

Yes, it had to be that quote. Predictable but necessary.

This film is, essentially, superb. It tends to suffer somewhat from the overly high expectations one tends to have for films as critically acclaimed as this, but I won't discriminate against it for that. The film didn't choose to be so hyped. In truth, this film may not be quite amongst the best ever made but it is, nonetheless, utterly superb.

I won't recount the intriguing plot with its twists and turns and the gradual reveal of the story of Harry Lime, played with splendid charisma by the great Orson Welles. But the script paints as dark a picture of human nature as one would expect from the typewriter of Graham Greene. Vienna is made to look awesome by Carol Reed in its monochrome splendour, and the cast is superb. This is a Vienna still under occupation by the four powers, where even minor aristocrats resort to the black market to survive. This once-great imperial city has fallen very far indeed, with its grandiose Habsburg architecture seeming to mock it. 

Above all this film has atmosphere, pervaded as it is by a sense of doom and pessimism. And above it all floats that zither tune. This is a film that everyone should see.

Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949)

"Now, in those days, I had hardly any trouble with the Sixth Commandment..."

This is, I believe, the blog's first Ealing comedy, and it's certainly a fine one to start with. It's a gentle comedy, witty, original and a highly entertaining way to while away a couple of hours. Dennis Price is an excellent star, Alec Guinness plays all his parts with aplomb, but the real star is the script.

This is a very British film about class, as the impoverished yet high-born Louis d'Ascoyne plots to bump off his relatives, all of whom look suspiciously like Alec Guinness, so that he can become the 10th Duke of Chalfont. This is done via some entertaining and delightful murders, a witty script, a clever twist at the end involving a love triangle and Arthur Lowe, and a superbly effective non-linear structure as Louis, to be changed in the morning but nevertheless fawned over as a duke, writes his memoirs from his condemned cell.

There's a startling use of the "n" word towards the end which jars somewhat, but there's little count in criticising a film made in 1949 for racism when all involved are long dead. It's a witty and delightful film which should be seen by all, and has made me keen to see many more Ealing comedies.