Pool of London

A film of super quality. Great direction and cinematography but probably a nightmare for the sound crew doing London location shooting…must have required extensive post-production work in the studio.

The actors are all well chosen in that they are totally believable…even down to Michael Ward's camp cameo pianist "…who ME?".

There are usually complaints about women with cut-glass accents appearing in films of that era and sounding out of place, but this was post-WW2 and lots of young, and not so young women who'd earned independence in the services or the war factories, or had become war-widows weren't quite ready to go back to mummy…so they got city jobs and lived in or shared bed-sits and tried to enjoy life in Austerity Britain.

This film shows that in spite of what hindsight historians would have us believe, not everyone went round looking glum. They still wanted pleasure in life in spite of severe rationing...and in spite of the five and a half- to six-day working week. In the absence of TV, with only the radio to rely on, people went out to pubs, clubs, dance-halls, variety shows, the theatre and the cinema. They didn't embrace austerity, they needed a break from it.

All of which is beautifully reflected in this film. The plot is no real surprise, the acting is more than adequate for a low-budget film, but the addition of location filming around the city streets, the bomb sites, the wharfs, the cobbled alleys, the dockyard taverns and the hustle and bustle of a busy port give this film a sheen that makes it rise above expectations.

A long overdue release, that finally came in 2009, the film is a face-spotters delight.

I do firmly believe that Bonar Colleano, had he lived, would have had a great career as a character actor in the UK.