Dr Keith M. Johnston

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.' (Barr 1980: 188). The...

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...

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...

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...

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? Cheer Boys Cheer is a comedy, produced at Ealing, which concerns a struggle between...

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. This is not to back away from my belief that Mervyn Johns is the strongest and most varied actor across these 95 films,...

When Ealing is described as producing a strong combination of drama and documentary work during their Second World War propaganda films (continuing the tradition set by the GPO Film Unit), titles like The Next of Kin (1942), San Demetrio London (1943), and For Those in Peril (1944) tend to crop...

I really wanted to like Secret People more than I did. Made within a year of The Gentle Gunman (1952), another Ealing project around terrorism (although about the IRA rather than the unidentified and Europe-wide 'Organisation' at the heart of this film), Secret People is obviously trying to do something...

For a studio whose reputation is so rooted in realism, Ealing enjoyed dabbling with fantasy, from dream sequences in Let George Do It (1941) and The Love Lottery (1954) to the more supernatural-infused plots of The Halfway House (1944) and The Ship that Died of Shame (1955) to this curiosity,...

It is tempting to note that the most striking visual element of this film (called Four Desperate Men in U.S.), is its final one: the 'Ealing films' logo fading to black, bringing to an end 21 years worth of continuous production under Michael Balcon. But that is arguably as reductive...

Watching this again, I couldn't help wondering: is The Ladykillers Ealing's most famous film? In academic circles, it is probably one of the most cited - with debates ranging over what aspect of British society it is satirising, what larger contemporary issues it might be addressing, or simply hailing the...

For Those in Peril is a perfect example of the story-documentary approach begun in the British documentary groups, and developed through Ealing projects such as San Demetrio, London (1943) or Convoy (1940). Here, the film uses strong documentary filming techniques around life at port and on Air-Sea Rescue launch 183,...

The Proud Valley seems to be a film that is required to stand for a lot of different opinions, historical developments, and ideologies: perhaps understandably, given this is an Ealing film with black American actor Paul Robeson in the lead role, about a mining village's attempt to self-govern their own...

The fourth in Ealing's five Australian films, after The Overlanders (1946), Eureka Stockade (1949) and Bitter Springs (1950) - and the first produced by Ealing Films, with financial backing from MGM - this is an episodic film that struggles to effectively dramatise the life of 'swagman' Jim Macauley (Peter Finch),...

When it comes to the well-known Ealing comedies, those six or seven films that - for many people - define what 'Ealing' means within British film culture, it is difficult for me to pick a favourite. The Man in the White Suit (1951) has real bite to it, a pitch-black...

Charles Barr bases his assessment on the final five years of Ealing production on one line at the end of this film, where Sam Lilly (Bill Owen) admits to Barbara Crain (Kay Walsh) that although his career as a jockey is washed up, he earned 'just enough' from betting on...

Produced in the year after The Blue Lamp (1950), Pool of London shares similar thematic and narrative interests in criminal gangs (a jewellery heist in this case), car chases and delinquency. Although produced by the same team (Basil Dearden and Michael Relph), this film features little of the jovial camaraderie...

The first of Ealing's Australian adventures, this shares similarities with the later Tommy Trinder-starring Bitter Springs in its use of wilderness and landscape, and the joy with which Harry Watt embraces the visual iconography of the Western (or particular aspects of it at least). Unlike Bitter Springs' Cowboys and Indians...

Like Harry Watt's The Overlanders (1946) and Where No Vultures Fly (1951), with which it shares similar narrative and thematic DNA, this is a (sometimes uncomfortably colonial) look at the relationship between white and black, here in the context of Australian homesteaders who, in 1900, trek 600 miles to a...

It is tempting to see Champagne Charlie through the lens of later comments Michael Balcon made about projecting Britain as a 'patron and parent of great writing, painting and music' and the necessity of moving beyond an aesthetic based purely in realism. While it is possible to read the film...