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All those British crime films once deemed undesirable for the National Image are beginning to get the attention they deserve. This story of a single day in a working class section of London has plenty of criminal activity but blends it in with the everyday crimes of desperation and boredom. The Sandigate girls are flirting with trouble but Googie Withers’ Rose Sandigate has gone much further: she’s hiding an escaped fugitive who was once her lover in the vain hope of recapturing her lost youth. Director Robert Hamer examines a dozen distinctive characters on the edge of respectability, in one of the most original ‘Brit noirs’ we’ve seen to date.

It Always Rains on Sunday

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1947 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 92 min. / Street Date November 5, 2019 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95

Starring: Googie Withers, John McCallum, Jack Warner, Edward Chapman, Susan Shaw, Patricia Plunkett, Nigel Stock, David Lines, Sydney Tafler,...

Stars: Mandy Miller, Phyllis Calvert, Jack Hawkins, Terence Morgan, Godfrey Tearle, Marjorie Fielding, Nancy Price, Edward Chapman, Patricia Plunkett, Eleanor Summerfield, Colin Gordon | Written by Nigel Balchin, Jack Whittingham | Directed by Alexander Mackendrick

When you watch Mandy, you can’t help but feel it was a film ahead of its time. The story of a deaf girl unable to speak, the new Blu-ray is the perfect chance to watch the movie again.

When Mandy’s (Mandy Miller) parents discover that their child is deaf, they struggle to help her communicate not only with the outside world, but with themselves too. When Christine (Phyllis Calvert), the mother, decides to take Mandy to a school for deaf children, her husband’s reluctance to allow this puts a strain on their marriage.

What is impressive about Mandy is that it doesn’t over dramatise the story of a little girl trapped in her own little world,...

★★★★☆ A key part of the BFI's Ealing: Light and Dark season and rereleased this Friday, Robert Hamer's It Always Rains on Sunday (1947) is a much-underrated kitchen sink crime drama set over one dreary Sunday, telling a tale of working-class life set within London's East End. Based on the novel by Arthur La Bernby, the story concerns the family life of Rose Sandgate (Googie Withers), a typical East End housewife married to the much older George (Edward Chapman) and living with his two young daughter Vi (Susan Shaw) and Doris (Patricia Plunkett) and their own young son, Alfie (David Lines).

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