London Belongs to Me

As such, and coming from the pen of a well-to-do gentleman who ran both ITV and BBC-TV during their infancy (Norman Collins, who wrote the novel upon which the film is based), it's more than a little patronizing, though its warmth is sincere.

The film concerns the doings of various denizens of the fictional Dulcimer Street, a once-grand neighborhood now considerably frayed at the sleeve.

"All the characters in this novel are imaginary," Collins wrote. "The London of the title is real enough - that's London all right. But Dulcimer Street and the lives of the people in it, like the other lives which cross with theirs, are all fictitious. And so are the various Funlands, cafés, Sprititualist Societies, agencies, hospitals and institutions, with which the story deals." The story concerns the true urban dwellers, Collin informs us: "plenty of real Londoners who sleep the night in London as well as work the day there - some in love, some in debt, some committing murders, some adultery, some trying to get on in the world, some looking forward to a pension, some getting drunk, and some holding up a new baby. This is about a few of them." At the center of the hubbub is a retired gentleman, pensioned off to get "a pound a week for doing nothing," his long-suffering wife who pines for a suburban cottage, and their attractive daughter of marriageable age. The young lady has two suitors, one Percy Boon (Attenborough), a young man of flexible morals (we know he is an "at-risk" youth from his first frame, as he is shown reading a comic book -- a notorious corrupter of the age), the other a police officer. Aside from the police officer, everyone this little family knows is unsavory; the criminal Attenborough, the con-man Sim, the venal, man-hungry widow Joyce Carey, the tramp St. Helier, and their Uncle Henry (Stephen Murray), a communist agitator.

Collins seems to grant that crime, suffering and unequal justice are the inescapable lot of the less privileged, but Uncle Henry's political buffoonery is there to let us know that radical politics are not his aim.

This environment, and the film's plot primarily concerning Attenborough's slippery slope to criminality, has the seeds of noir, but what springs from those seeds is half domestic drama, half screwball comedy.

It's clear early on that Collins forgives all of his characters for both their willful sins and their hapless mistakes. If you aren't too annoyed by the patronizing noblesse oblige of the author, you'll find yourself having a good time and perhaps, like myself, sufficiently curious about the characters to seek out the novel (five pounds, used, at Amazon.UK)

Richard Attenborough leads a somewhat disjointed cast in this rather lengthy drama. He is "Percy", a rather impressionable young man who lives with his beloved mother (Gladys Henson) in a boarding house amidst a host of interesting lodgers. Sadly for him, he is soon mixed up with the wrong sort - some small time hoodlums - and becomes a murder suspect. I suppose the house to be a metaphor for the broader United Kingdom following the end of WWII - a collection of the aspirational, the optimistic, and the resigned - but there are too many characters for us to keep tabs on, and though the efforts from Alastair Sim as the Dickensianly titled "Mr. Squales"; Stephen Murray, the lovely Fay Compton ("Mrs. Josser") and a superb series of scenes, rather late in the day, from Hugh Griffith all stand up fine on their own, the film as a combination piece is pretty much all over the place. Attenborough tries hard, and at times he does fire on all cylinders, but he isn't quite good enough to pull all the strands together, nor is the Sidney Gilliat direction/screenplay, so it can come across as just a little too much of an episodic compendium of loosely connected stories rather than a cohesive feature. Still, it does provide us with quite an interesting observation of post war London and of a way of communal life now (mercifully) long gone for most of us.

The quaint, dated elements of old British, black and white, post-war films are just my cup of tea.

Intimate insights into the lives of a disparate group of characters, forced to tolerate each other, is the sort of thing only the British do expertly.

Numerous familiar players all excel in their respective roles with stand-outs being Alistair Sim, Joyce Carey, Fay Compton and Richard Attenborough whose convincing portrayal of a terrified good boy gone wrong is palpable.

Great atmospheric music, photography and narration, along with the acting, make this a priceless gem of a film.

If , like me, you love the plays of Terence Rattigan then "London Belongs to Me" belongs to you too.

This odd little comedy/drama from Sidney Gilliat doesn't really hold a lot of water, but does hold a fair amount of charm, as the motley occupants of a London boarding house rally in support of one of their own, a young would-be spiv arrested for murder. As the youth in question Attenborough is pop-eyed, guilt-wracked and hapless, eerily resembling a young Peter Lorre-- we feel sorry for him, though we may not empathize much. But the film's emotional shadings come from the older actors like Wylie Watson, Fay Compton, and Joyce Carey (no, not the novelist), who stand by the boy simply because they know it's the right thing to do.

The plot's barely there, but there's a lovely eccentric atmosphere to it all, and also a juicy supporting bit for the great Alastair Sim. Hilariously morose, with a strange and seedy profession, his Mr. Squales would provide inspiration some seven years later for Alec Guinness's great turn in The Ladykillers, down to the overbite and the lank, terrible hair. Sim was a few years away yet from being the UK's most popular film star; he was the weirdest and most watchable of screen idols. He walks away with the film.

This film seems by turn to be a comedy,a drama,a romantic film,and a horror film.There are so many different styles in this film.Likewise the acting,from the restrained Wylie Watson to the wildly over the top Alistair Sim and Hugh Griffiths.You then add in the nightmare suffered by Richard Attenborough whilst awaiting trial,which seems to have been inspired by Dead Of Night.At times this film feels as if it has been written by such diverse talents as Noel Coward and Terence Ratigan.Attenborough as usual plays a bit of a coward and it is really hard to sympathise with his predicament.A really strange film.Although quite long it nevertheless holds the viewer as you don't know what is going to happen next.