The news that Doctor Who's 50th anniversary special would be broadcast in 3D should, given my interest in 3D media and my long-term fandom of the Doctor and his TARDIS, be the final tipping point that pushes me over the edge into investing in a new 3D TV....

This week, BFI Palgrave MacMillan release Ealing Revisited, a new collection of essays on what is, arguably, the most iconic and best loved studio in British cinema history. While the book release is being supported by a series of screenings and events at the BFI, it is worth explaining why...

And so, it came to an end. Not with a whimper, but with a bang: Passport to Pimlico, one of the best known 'Ealing comedies', one of the films that (it is claimed) speaks for the whole of the studio's output and thematic interests, and one of the films that...

Nowhere to Go was the second-last Ealing film produced and, suitably, is also the second-last film to be viewed and written about for this challenge. Erstwhile Ealing editor Seth Holt made his directorial debut in a crime thriller which he scripted with Ealing script editor (and theatre critic) Kenneth Tynan...

When discussing Young Man's Fancy (1939), it was noted that these early Ealing films act as a bridge between the Basil Dean / Associated Talking Picture films produced at Ealing and the Balcon-produced films that the production company called 'Ealing Studios' would become known for. Yet even using that framework...

His Excellency is one of those films that is difficult to love, partly because it often fails to deliver a coherent experience or meaning: it has moments of jingoism and anti-foreigner attitudes that feel alien to a 21st century audience, yet also goes to great pains to mock the British...

The idea that the mother-child relationship was a recurring...

Mandy is a film that can be defined in various ways. The DVD cover, in a departure from the normal Ealing Studios branding, sells the film as 'from the director of The Man in the White Suit', but the film also has generic similarities to 'social problem' films of the...

Between 1938 and 1940, director Robert Stevenson, cinematographer Ronald Neame and scriptwriter Roland Pertwee were part of the creative bridge between Basil Dean's Associated Talking Pictures (which were based at the studios in Ealing) and Michael Balcon's new production company called Ealing Studios. While they produced a number of films...

Re-watching Kind Hearts and Coronets for the sake of this blog post (the film is one of the Ealing films I've seen several times in my life, although admittedly not in recent years), I'd forgotten how sexual a film it is. Many of the films seen over the course of...

In the forthcoming collection Ealing Revisited, Robert Murphy describes The Man in the Sky as a film any national cinema should be proud of. Yet this film is rarely listed among the greats of Ealing's oeuvre, never mind that of British cinema more generally. While I'm not going to summarise...

In the numerous celebrations and commentaries around the 100th anniversary of Scott's expedition in 2012, few mentioned this Ealing hagiography of Captain Scott (John Mills), the studio's big budget Technicolor epic of Antarctic exploration. Part of Michael Balcon's belief that Ealing (and the British film industry more widely) should be...

From the opening credits, which dedicate the film to the 'Officers and Men of the Royal and Merchant Navy' and the note that 'many scenes in our film... were taken at sea under actual wartime conditions' Convoy is, in many senses, the archetypal Ealing war film. The focus, like the...

Sometimes, when watching one of the Ealing films that make up this challenge, I am reminded of another film. Most often the link is to another Ealing Studios production or other examples of 'classic' British cinema: so, with Dance Hall that list might include female-centred dramas such as Millions Like...

Barnacle Bill (aka All at Sea in the U.S.) has an undeserved critical reputation as a late failure that is more concerned with the studios' past comedy glories than it is in creating something new and innovative. Two famous accounts of the studio are scathing in their assessments: Charles Barr...

It is hard to know how to react to I Believe in You: in one sense, this could be dismissed as reliable Ealing social problem fodder, where nice upper and middle-class people volunteer to be probation officers to help deal with the problematic working classes, particularly the rebellious youth who...

Even though earlier Ealing films in this blog have featured documentary elements - the likes of The Big Blockade (1942), The Next of Kin (1942) or The Bells Go Down (1943) - they contained their documentary elements within a feature narrative. Painted Boats, however, is the opposite: a documentary that...

This historical Western finishes off the coverage of Ealing's five Australian films in this blog and, as that genre description suggests, it has a lot in common with the films it was produced between, namely The Overlanders (1946) and Bitter Springs (1950). Like those productions, Eureka Stockade relies on the...

Michael Balcon often identified this film as an early example of what he believed Ealing films to be capable of: a character study about (allegedly) realistic people and situations, a commentary on modern society, with a focus on community and the representation of British concerns. Yet while that description fits...

The third film produced at Ealing Studios after Michael Balcon arrived (following The Gaunt Stranger and The Ware Case, both 1938), it is both tempting and potentially misleading to try and see the future path of Ealing in the tealeaves of Let's Be Famous. Charles Barr describes the film as...