Hue and Cry (1947)

User Rating:

7.0/10   

Director:

Charles Crichton

Writer:

T.E.B. Clarke (writer)

Release Date:

February 1947 (UK)

Genre:

Adventure | Comedy | Crime

Plot:

A gang of street boys foil a master crook who sends commands for robberies by cunningly altering a comic strip's wording each week...

Plot Keywords:

Ealing | Secret Code | Smuggling | Secret Master Villain | Misleading Star Billing

Cast

Alastair Sim	...	Felix H. Wilkinson
Harry Fowler	...	Joe Kirby
Douglas Barr	...	Alec
Joan Dowling	...	Clarry
Jack Warner	...	Nightingale
Valerie White	...	Rhona
Jack Lambert	...	Ford
Ian Dawson	...	Norman
Gerald Fox	...	Dicky
David Simpson	...	Arthur
Albert Hughes	...	Wally
John Hudson	...	Stan
David Knox	...	Dusty
Jeffrey Sirett	...	Bill
James Crabbe	...	Terry (as James Crabb)

Also Known As:

Hue & Cry (UK) (poster title)

Runtime:

82 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Colour:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound System)

Certification:

Iceland:L | Germany:12 | Finland:S | UK:U

Filming Locations:

Ealing Studios, Ealing, London, England, UK

Company:

Ealing Studios

Trivia:

Harry Fowler later married fellow actress Joan Dowling, but sadly she committed suicide in 1954, aged just 26.

Goofs:

Continuity: When Joe Kirby first looks at the milk bar shop front (near the beginning, just after asking the man with the open top car if he is Selwyn Pike), the light fitting casts a very long shadow. But in the next shot of the shop, it is lit from a different direction, and the shadow has completely changed in length and position.

Quotes:

Felix H. Wilkinson: Oh, how I loathe adventurous-minded boys.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Forever Ealing (2002) (TV)

Soundtrack:

Music

Great, Little-known British Post-war Comedy Drama, with Noir Overtones

Caution: Ending briefly described.

A young teenager and his pals discover that a gang leader is using a "boy's magazine" (called a comic, but seemingly more of a pulp-fiction text magazine) to tell his gang what jobs to pull. At the expense of logic, this allows for a nice scene at the beginning where a boy is reading a story and the events he's reading about are simultaneously happening around him. This is billed as a comedy, and there are many amusing scenes. Sim, in a small part, is delightful as the innocent, swishy, eccentric writer of the magazine stories. And there fine comic touches, such as, when they stop to look in a store window while trailing someone, the seamstress inside sticks out her tongue. But, unexpectedly, it's as a noir film that this shines. Many scenes are filmed on-location in war-torn London. At one point the kids descend into the sewers to avoid arrest, and when it seems that they can't get out, one becomes hysterical. The lobby of Sim's building is a complete noir set. The finale, with the boy entering darkness to follow the villain, and their cat-and-mouse fight on the open floors of a bombed building is noir in every aspect; the setting, the action, the lighting, the whole style of filming. The fight is violent, and ends with the boy jumping from the floor above onto the villain's stomach, killing him. It's a brutal death for a man who's crime is handling hot furs, and who the boy had no "personal" reason to kill. These noir aspects are the most striking part of the film, and it might have been even better if they had been even stronger. As it is, this Ealing film is still one of the best British films of the immediate post-war period.