Hue and Cry

From director Charles Crichton who made the classic A Fish called Wanda in 1988 is this early effort from 1947, Hue and Cry.

A crime caper focussed on kids who discover a criminal ring that are using a comic strip to send instructions to plan their jobs.

Joe Kirby (Harry Fowler) is a lad who is always in a spot of bother. He is placed by a policeman for a job with a Covent Garden grocer Nightingale (Jack Warner) who listens to his stories of a fur smuggling ring with a filthy laugh.

Felix Wilkinson (Alastair Sim) is the scatty comic strip writer who stories are being manipulated by an insider in the publishers. As the police does not believe Joe's fantastical tale, it is up to him and his gang to take on the crooks.

I must have first watched this film as a teenager. It rather reminded me of those Enid Blyton adventures I used to read as a kid. The post war setting of a bombed out London make the city look like an adventure playground for kids.

It is an enjoyable Ealing comic adventure as the kids take on adult crooks and put themselves in jeopardy. Sim gives an amusing cameo.

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 whose 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.

I SO would have loved this movie as a kid; but being far too young, I'm now only getting into these lesser known Ealings as a middle-aged film lover. Hue & Cry is part of the Ealing Comedy DVD Collection.

From what I've heard from older folk and relatives about the just post- war years, this yarn is plain good old fashioned fun, but one for the boys only, whatever their age. With bombed-out London their playground and comics their fantastical relief, young boys run around pursuing adventure at every turn. This is where I get my Angels with Dirty Faces connection from.

A few disgruntled viewers say that Hue & Cry lacks focus and central characters. This is true - a boy's adventure never runs to plan and if it does, you change it! But, seen as the first Ealing comedy proper, the Studio is still finding its feet and is gathering talented people to direct (Charles Chricton, who directed many BIG Ealings) screenwriters (T.E.B Clarke, who is synonymous with Ealing) and one very accomplished cinematographer, Douglas Slocombe, who here manages some Hitchcockian imagery - such as on a spiral staircase and in a room full of circus dummies. Otherwise, it's brisk, the camera darting about, with a film score every bit as vibrant as the escapades.

No-one ever, though, denies the pull and special attraction of Alistair Sim as the eccentric Comic strip creator, a Scrooge-like hermit living at the top of those scary stairs. That he isn't on screen very much just happens to be one of those things, relish him when he is on, that's all you can do.

The story, now, to an adult takes second fiddle - lots of boyish conspiracies and such, avoiding the police and the occasional fight. Something about a missing page in their favourite comic and they have to use passwords and such, getting caught in gangster Jack Warner's wide- boy gangsterish crook (as far cry from his beloved Dixon of Dock Green!). It is the sights - and sounds - of an almost alien London, only a generation ago that makes it all so watchable - and enjoyable. Unlike today, with our comparatively lazy and health and safety pampered youth, these boy actors literally pour gusto and energy into everything, swarming over a rubbled landscape like herds of buffalo in a western.

The sound is often a bit thin and distorted but the picture quality not as bad as it could be, a little lacking in punch perhaps but surprisingly blemish-free.

I found a copy of this movie in my local (Phoenix, Arizona) used book store. Ah, bliss! The sights of old London, albeit somewhat bomb-damaged, before the developers started to build ugly tower blocks. The movie itself is excellent, with good characterization for the 'kids', although Jack Warner's role as the villain seems a little overblown. Alistair Sim's role as the nervous author of comic books is an excellent vignette, showing his trademark nervous twitchy smile. The final chase and confrontation, at "Ballard's Wharf", reputedly in Wapping, was actually filmed on the opposite side of the river, as can be scene in the long shots, where St. Paul's cathedral can be seen.

This was the first of the Ealing comedies and after fifty years it is still entertaining.The only thing that hasn't stood the test of time is the overacting of Alistair Sim as a writer of boy's adventure stories. The kids in the film are wonderfully natural.

Pictorially it is an interesting look at a London still suffering from the war. Most of the film was shot on location and the kids playgrounds were the bomb damaged buildings. During the climatic scenes there are some magnificent shots, taken from above, where it appears as though every kid in London is rushing through the streets to help capture the criminals.

Oddly enough, although very different, the movie had somewhat the same scenic look as THE THIRD MAN. Both were set in bomb damaged cities and in HUE AND CRY there is even a scene where the kids escape through the sewers of London, predating Harry Lime's famous scene in the sewers of Vienna.

North Americans may find the accents rather a deterrent but I think the film is well worth the effort.