Hue and Cry

source: Hue and Cry

This apparently was the first comedy by Ealing Studios, and while it is far from their funniest, it was amazingly good and set the stage for even better films to follow. It's a fanciful story that is reminiscent of some of the films of the 1980s and 1990s where kids are smart and need to teach the grownups a thing or two--something that was very novel in 1947. The film begins in London just after the war. The film is interesting because of all the still-evident bomb damage from the blitz. It's all about a group of precocious kids--one in particular. Through some strange coincidences and clever thinking, they figure out that a gang is using a comic page in the newspaper to broadcast instructions to the individual members. However, when the gang get wind of this, they turn the table on the kids and now the police won't believe their wild story about secret codes and robberies. So, it's up to the kids to take the law in their own hands and save the day in one of the more rousing finales I've seen in a long time. Excellent and original, this one is well worth a look due to clever writing as well as an ending that is very hard to forget.

From director Charles Crichton who made the classic A Fish called Wanda in 1988 is this early effort from 1947, Hue and Cry. A crime caper focussed on kids who discover a criminal ring that are using a comic strip to send instructions to plan their jobs. Joe Kirby (Harry Fowler) is a lad who is always in a spot of bother. He is placed by a policeman for a job with a Covent Garden grocer Nightingale (Jack Warner) who listens to his stories of a fur smuggling ring with a filthy laugh. Felix Wilkinson (Alastair Sim) is the scatty comic strip writer who stories are being manipulated by an insider in the publishers. As the police does not believe Joe's fantastical tale, it is up to him and his gang to take on the crooks. I must have first watched this film as a teenager. It rather reminded me of those Enid Blyton adventures I used to read as a kid. The post war setting of a bombed out London make the city look like an adventure playground for kids. It is an enjoyable Ealing comic adventure as the kids take on adult crooks and put themselves in jeopardy. Sim gives an amusing cameo.

I particularly enjoyed seeing London in its derelict state after WW2, I remember my parents taking me there in those days and seeing piles of bricks everywhere. It was amusing to read a review by an American academic whose main complaint was that the children were all white and there should have been a better balance with black children. I wonder where he thought Ealing Studios might have found such people in 1946/7 - the Empire Windrush did not arrive at Tilbury until June 1948. Indeed looking at the devastation in London in the film it is amazing that Ealing could make anything. This is something that i watched as a kid and have seen many, many times again.

Like some other reviewers I first saw H and C at the now long-forgotten Saturday morning pictures and it was thoroughly enjoyed by just about everyone there. Such a refreshing change from the usual feature films they dredged up for us, most of which seemed to date from the early thirties and to be based om motor racing. Having seen it many times since it's difficult now to know what I remember from that first time but I do recall the remark of the sadly missed Joan Dowling when they first descended into the sewers, "Coo, dunnit pong", causing great hilarity. Easily pleased or what? Much as I enjoyed reading the reviews here I have to take issue with some. One claims that the lack of swearing among the boy gang indicated some sort of superior morality back in 1946. Actually it was because bad language was simply not permitted in films then and I can assure everyone that in real life there would have been plenty. Another stated that Anthony Newley was in it. He wasn't. I think the reviewer was fooled by the Newley-like looks of Roy, played by Stanley Escane. And a third thinks that jumping on the stomach of the chief villain and killing him was a bit strong. I saw the film recently and there is no indication that he was killed, merely winded. It was perhaps unpleasant but if anything the scene where the bent cop was catapulted and stunned was worse. That could have killed or blinded him. I was more interested in the review by Robert Temple. I have nothing against the gentleman and he is entitled to his opinion but I feel that some of his comments are misguided and on occasion just plain wrong. He seems for example to read into H and C, with its use of bomb sites and derelict buildings, some sort of metaphor for WWII but I think he's reading too much into this. The film was made on location in London in 1946 when the makers would have been hard put to it not to include bomb sites. They were an unavoidable backdrop to the action, not a part of it, though as they existed use was made of them. The film is simply no more than what used to be called a rattling good yarn and thankfully does not contain any 'messages'. Further, amid what I have to say is a welter of name dropping, Mr Temple not only (wrongly) thinks that some of the action takes place in Tilbury but also makes a glaring geographical error in placing Tilbury in the East End despite its position in Essex some 12 or 13 miles from the fringes of the East End at East Ham. While there is certainly a Chadwell (St Mary) in Tilbury this is similarly miles from the scene of the action at the end of the film which is, officially at any rate, at Wapping and I suspect that Mr Temple has confused Chadwell with Shadwell, which is next door to Wapping and therefore does come within the East End.

This film is tremendous good fun, from the deliberately zany credit sequence onwards, and still goes down a treat with the youngsters at a Saturday morning matinée. A good deal of it really is pretty funny on a laugh-out-loud level, although it's not a comedy as such -- the jokes are generally in the throw-away lines and visual gags rather than in the plot as such, which is more of a children's adventure story. (It's notable to a modern eye that in the 1940s, the adolescent heroes of this story are all at work and earning in their mid-teens: there's one sequence at the end where we see what is basically a montage of all the different potential boys' jobs in London, from the BBC to the G.P.O. via the ice-cream trade!) The story is the classic Enid Blyton/Anthony Buckeridge-style tale of the over-imaginative child who stumbles upon genuine villainy and perceives it in terms of an unsophisticated thriller, only for the adults, unsurprisingly, not to believe a word. The plausibility does get strained a bit when it transpires that all the exotic villains listed in the pulp-fiction stories of "The Trump" are genuine London criminals under the command of the sinister mastermind, not to mention the fact that all the authority figures in the film turn out to be in on the plot, but it's a good, fast-moving production that bears a strong resemblance to children's books of the era and presumably appealed to the same audience. I was actually surprised to find the film unexpectedly sophisticated: it offers considerable enjoyment on an adult level and I wonder how many children even at the time would have got all the comic allusions. (It is also remarkable as one of the few films of any genre where a vehicle crashes over the edge and *doesn't* burst into flames!) To the modern eye, of course, the location shooting also offers a fascinating document of a world that has all but utterly disappeared, from Covent Garden to the post-war bomb-sites, and a society that has gone with it, from bus conductors to milk-carts. Alistair Sim has an entertaining cameo as a timid writer of thrilling tales, but the film is mainly carried by the boys, who are by and large very natural in their acting style. Harry Fowler in the lead is particularly good. This is a well-made little film that plays tricks with its genre and with its audience's expectations and deserves a wider reputation: I knew it only from a few seconds' montage in a documentary on Ealing Studios, and it is far less widely available than their famous later output. The Ealing film of which I was reminded most closely -- perhaps because of a similar setting -- was actually "Passport to Pimlico", although this is clearly pitched at a younger audience.

The Trump! Forgotten, under seen or not very good? Either way Hue & Cry is a very important film in the pantheon of Ealing Studios. Blending comedy with that of a children's thriller, this would be the launching pad for the long string of Ealing classics that would follow. Nobody at the time would know of its importance, nor did head guru Micahel Balcon have ideas to steer the studio in the direction that it would take, thus practically inventing its own genre of film. In truth, it's a scratchy film, admittedly one with moments of class and social hilarity, nifty set-ups and ever likable young actors, but it's a bit too wrought to fully work, the odd blend of comic book values and crime busting youths is never at one for a fully rounded spectacle. But the hints of greatness are there, an awareness of the times, the half bombed London backdrop, the send-ups of Hollywood conventions, and the irrepressible Alastair Sim a forerunner of many eccentrics to follow. Hue & Cry is a fine and decent viewing experience, and perhaps it's harsh to judge it against "those" bona fide classics coming up along the rails? But really it's more for historical values to seek it out and it's not an Ealing film you would recommend to a newcomer wanting to acquaint themselves with that most brilliant of British studios. 6.5/10

I SO would have loved this movie as a kid; but being far too young, I'm now only getting into these lesser known Ealings as a middle-aged film lover. Hue & Cry is part of the Ealing Comedy DVD Collection. From what I've heard from older folk and relatives about the just post- war years, this yarn is plain good old fashioned fun, but one for the boys only, whatever their age. With bombed-out London their playground and comics their fantastical relief, young boys run around pursuing adventure at every turn. This is where I get my Angels with Dirty Faces connection from. A few disgruntled viewers say that Hue & Cry lacks focus and central characters. This is true - a boy's adventure never runs to plan and if it does, you change it! But, seen as the first Ealing comedy proper, the Studio is still finding its feet and is gathering talented people to direct (Charles Chricton, who directed many BIG Ealings) screenwriters (T.E.B Clarke, who is synonymous with Ealing) and one very accomplished cinematographer, Douglas Slocombe, who here manages some Hitchcockian imagery - such as on a spiral staircase and in a room full of circus dummies. Otherwise, it's brisk, the camera darting about, with a film score every bit as vibrant as the escapades. No-one ever, though, denies the pull and special attraction of Alistair Sim as the eccentric Comic strip creator, a Scrooge-like hermit living at the top of those scary stairs. That he isn't on screen very much just happens to be one of those things, relish him when he is on, that's all you can do. The story, now, to an adult takes second fiddle - lots of boyish conspiracies and such, avoiding the police and the occasional fight. Something about a missing page in their favourite comic and they have to use passwords and such, getting caught in gangster Jack Warner's wide- boy gangsterish crook (as far cry from his beloved Dixon of Dock Green!). It is the sights - and sounds - of an almost alien London, only a generation ago that makes it all so watchable - and enjoyable. Unlike today, with our comparatively lazy and health and safety pampered youth, these boy actors literally pour gusto and energy into everything, swarming over a rubbled landscape like herds of buffalo in a western. The sound is often a bit thin and distorted but the picture quality not as bad as it could be, a little lacking in punch perhaps but surprisingly blemish-free.

Sometimes a film is worth it just because of an accident. In this case the accident is that the Germans (not the Nazis, the Germans) had decimated large parts of London, and we had that as a set for this little drama. Its a great little story too, perfect for this very successful notion of noir light. Its the old fold: writer writes and the fictional becomes real. The only concession to reality — which incidentally allows it to be inserted into the noir world — is that what the writer writes is tampered with on the way to the book. One scene toward the beginning is particularly nice, where a boy reading a comic sees the same thing in reality. I recommend "How to Murder Your Wife" as a much better entry in this minigenre. But this is good too. At least the first half. The second half (after the great, really great sewer scene) is a sort of noir Bowery Boys gets their man. Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

I shudder to think what the 'academics' will talk this one up. Consider: a determined group of 'little' people triumph over a gang of bullies aided no little by 'cracking' a code. I can hear them now in Film 'schools' the length and breadth of the land 'explaining' how to 'read' this as a metaphor for an England who had just won - with a little help from their friends - a major war against Germany aided by their cracking of the 'Enigma' code. I doubt whether screenwriter Tibby Clarke had anything more meaningful than a paycheque in mind when he dreamed up this yarn in which a group of unsophisticated teenagers without an 'O' level between them, uncover a plot involving a weekly comic book for boys which villains use to communicate details of proposed robberies. Alistair Sim is top-billed but as the writer of the serial he has only two scenes whilst Harry Fowler as the leader of the boys appears in virtually every one. It's all a tad gung-ho but given that it was shot in 1946 that's to be expected. Though it's an Ealing film it's meant to be serious so do try not to laugh.