Film watch: Hue and Cry
Mar. 22nd, 2021 08:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
callmemadamHue and Cry was the first Ealing comedy, made in 1947. What was normal life then, i.e. bombed-out London with children playing on the bomb sites, is now fascinating social history.
I watched this on Talking Pictures and loved it. It’s also available online and, I think, on Amazon. A teenage boy (Harry Fowler) is convinced that a gang of criminals is using a boys’ comic, Trump, to pass secret codes about their next raid. Adults don’t believe him, so he and a crowd of local children set about spying on their suspects. They recruit London telegraph boys, ice cream sellers and other young workers, schoolboys and some girls, too. The finale, with hundreds of kids setting on a few criminals is dangerous but turned into a delightful romp. Alastair Sim is billed as the big star but has a small part (scene-stealing as ever) as the innocent writer of the misused stories. Jack Warner also stars, rather unconvincingly. Well worth catching and, always a plus with me, quite short.
I watched this on Talking Pictures and loved it. It’s also available online and, I think, on Amazon. A teenage boy (Harry Fowler) is convinced that a gang of criminals is using a boys’ comic, Trump, to pass secret codes about their next raid. Adults don’t believe him, so he and a crowd of local children set about spying on their suspects. They recruit London telegraph boys, ice cream sellers and other young workers, schoolboys and some girls, too. The finale, with hundreds of kids setting on a few criminals is dangerous but turned into a delightful romp. Alastair Sim is billed as the big star but has a small part (scene-stealing as ever) as the innocent writer of the misused stories. Jack Warner also stars, rather unconvincingly. Well worth catching and, always a plus with me, quite short.
