EALING STUDIOS CLASSICS

One writer. Six British classics. Cockles will be warmed

ON A BANK holiday, you are legally required to watch films. As old and fusty as possible. Today is a bank holiday, and it’s raining: ideal for a day’s worth of classics from Britain’s most famous film studio. A patriotic tear almost rolls down my cheek.

9AM DEAD OF NIGHT (1945)

Given Ealing’s association with gentle comedies, it’s a singular pleasure to start with an anthology horror. Dead Of Night is not especially wellknown but very influential (Matthew Holness cited it as an inspiration for Possum; Martin Scorsese is a fan), and though by modern standards it’s tepid rather than actually chilling — one character is haunted into never playing golf again, if you can imagine such a thing — it has a nice, proto-twilight Zone pace and a “decidedly improper” final twist in its framing device.

10.45AM PASSPORT TO PIMLICO (1949)

Now we’re into more classic ‘Ealing comedy’ territory, with this improbably lovely little yarn about a community of Londoners who, for arcane reasons, decide to secede from the UK to form the independent country of ‘Burgundy’. With my 2019 eyes, it feels hard not to read some sort of modern parable: like Brexit, there’s lots of talk about foreigners, self-determination, and negotiations reaching an impasse; unlike Brexit, it’s all sorted out with a good old knees-up down the local.

12.15PM WHISKY GALORE! (1949)

Another heartwarming tale of a community telling bureaucrats to piss off. During the war, the remote Scottish island of Todday runs out of whisky — a fate “worse than Hitler’s bombs”, as Finlay Currie’s narration claims — only for a ship with 50,000 cases of the stuff to handily run aground. I start to wonder if I should have a wee dram myself. After noon on a bank holiday is the rule, right? What’s the rule about drinking alone while watching 70-year-old films on your day off?

1.45PM KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS (1949)

After two films of thigh-slapping jollities, I’m not sure what I need right now is a dark comedy about the delicate sensibilities of British social classes in the Edwardian era. The BFI named it the sixthbest British film of all time, but I’m reaching for a glass of 16-year-old Lagavulin. What holds my interest is the extraordinary performances (plural!) of Ealing regular Alec Guinness, playing nine characters here; in many ways, this is the Nutty Professor II: The Klumps of the Ealing canon.

3.45PM THE LAVENDER HILL MOB (1951)

There’s a sense of déjà vu, watching these films in quick succession. Ealing had many actors under contract, so the same faces keep popping up. Look, it’s Alec Guinness again! Look, there’s Joan Greenwood from Whisky Galore!, and Miles Malleson from Dead Of Night! And bloody hell, it’s Sid James! (And — is that Audrey Hepburn?) There is familiarity elsewhere, too: it’s a hop across the Thames and not miles from the antiquated charm of Passport To Pimlico. Still, when it works, it works.

5.15PM THE LADYKILLERS (1955)

It occurs to me that I have spent roughly eight hours in a black-and-white world and have thus forgotten, Pleasantville-style, what colour looks like. So the Technicolor of The Ladykillers hits me like a railway signal to the face. Its memory might be slightly tarnished by the 2004 remake with Tom Hanks, officially The One Rubbish Coen Brothers Movie™, but the original remains a delicious treat. Alec Guinness is back, of course, indulging in his own hive of scum and villainy, while Katie Johnson as Mrs Wilberforce is a Wilber-force to be Wilber-reckoned with. I, on the other hand, am nearly exhausted from watching films — until I see On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is about to start on ITV4. Well, rules are rules!