After watching Out of the Clouds, I am ready to declare that the unsung hero of the 1950s stretch of my Ealing marathon is currently Sid James.

Ealing's eighth film after Michael Balcon's arrival at the studio is one of those that is permanently stuck in the debate over what makes a film 'Ealing-esque' or, indeed, what makes a comedy an Ealing comedy?

Authors such as Geoffrey MacNab have talked about repeated themes in Scottish literature and cinema (and books/films set in Scotland) around the terms Tartanry and Kailyardism: tropes and ideas of Scotland as a land of myth and tartan-clad heroes, or a world where canny individuals regularly outwit newcomers with native ingenuity.

Over 20 years ago, George Perry dismissed this film as 'unconvincing and cliché-ridden, and not for a moment are its players believable Yugoslavs.' (Perry 1981, 72) Putting aside the latter notion of how Ealing would populate a film with 'believable Yugoslavs,' that is a harsh criticism of a solid and enjoyable piece of filmmaking that both resembles and departs from standard Ealing wartime fare.

If Undercover (1943) - the previous entry in this Ealing blog - was an unexpected find that played with existing conventions from Ealing's wartime productions, The Four Just Men is an even more interesting discovery, a solid and enjoyable pre-war thriller from 1939 that offers an early example of the drama-propaganda production approach that would soon dominate the studio.

Revisiting this film three or four years after I first viewed it (for research on Ealing Studios' colour films) I still think it is unjustly dismissed within many studies of Ealing's productions: Charles Barr, for example, described it as 'an expensive, ponderous and loss-making period spectacle.'

There is something about the 1947-49 period of Ealing production that speaks to the renewed and widened sense of purpose that Michael Balcon wrote about in the post-war period. The Loves of Joanna Godden sits confidently alongside other projects.