The Magnet

I bought this black & white video recently from a street vendor in St Albans market, Hertfordshire as part of a job lot of three Ealing comedies he was selling for £15.The others were "Whisky Galore" and "Passport to Pimlico".The other comments written below adequately deal with the basic plot, so I shall not elaborate further on that.What is interesting is to see the young William Fox play the juvenile lead small boy and whose later stage name was changed to James Fox (brother of Edward Fox) who later became well known in the film "The Servant" and "Performance".I was born in 1946 and this film was produced in 1950 so those scenes shown of early post war Britain have a reminiscence for me, when I remember those bomb sites, school dinners, food rationing which extended up to 1955, and an altogether more simple life.In those days children went "out to play" with their friends much more than todays TV/computer bound generation.

The jokes about the Labour Government and psychiatry give the film a distinctly middle class feel which Ealing Studios did not usually portray in their comedies but which was firmly entrenched in the mainstream British film industry at the time.It would be some time before genuine British working class actors exploded onto the screen.The dockside gang the small boy befriends appeared to be genuine working class and so those scenes were the highlight for me.Of course this film being produced in 1950, there has to be a morality tale in the script.Here the evils of cheating someone bring inevitable feelings of guilt until assuaged by an equal measure of generosity by the little boy to the aggrieved party, a handicapped boy of similar age.

I had never seen this Ealing comedy before so was delighted by the unexpected twists and turns in the plot.If you are a fan of gentle Ealing comedies, you may want to seek out this long forgotten (by the major TV networks) film and you will be entertained I feel sure.

This film is very much of its time, and evokes a more gentler, long gone age. In many ways it is a typical "Ealing" film, although much location work takes place on Merseyside and, in particular New Brighton. I remember seeing this film on the children's' matinée in the 1950's - I enjoyed it then, and it has lost none of its charm now. It's main theme of "cheats not prospering" was a fine ideal then, and still applies today. The comparison of the affluent, comfortable, public school lifestyle of the main character to that of the boys he meets when he crosses the river to Liverpool, is very well drawn and brings an excellent sense of realism to the film. The location shots are first class, and lend an authenticity to the proceedings. The characters are, in the main, well portrayed and it's good to see another bravura performance from that most underrated of character actors, Meredith Edwards. All in all a lovely, timeless classic of a movie!

English films from right after the war — particularly those from Ealing or Archers — are a pretty interesting pocket to mine. Its a strange mix of experiments of all types. There's no predictability, no massive copying. Its as if everything is reset in a cultural medium and tastes need to be rediscovered or even reinvented.

This story as two elements. One is a story about a boy in a boy's clever world of invention and exploration. That's the bits you are meant to see. The other is overtly symbolic: his father is a clinical psychologist who has a need to "explain things." The story is about the hunger of certain stories, one would almost say the attraction or magnetism of stories, and that can be the only reason why the possession that triggers the story-story is a magnet.

What happens here is an ordinary episode triggers several fantastic stories, all of them with lives of their own as they adapt to live and propagate. There's extreme attention to symbols as if it were written by the psychologist: iron lungs, remote alarms, "secret" sign language, an invisible watch.

The story itself has minor charms. Its the loading of the overt symbols that is the fun part, especially since the writer seems to be poking fun at the notion of symbols the whole time.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

This post-war British film from the great Ealing studios, is a charming tale of innocence lost, and particularly the idea of childhood guilt, brought on by a small incident and exacerbated by fear and misconstrued information. Johnny Brent (a young James Fox - billed as William Fox), a 10 year old wanderer, cons a younger boy into giving him his magnet. After feeling guilt (and particularly the fear of being caught out) he hands the powerful magnet to a charity organiser, feeling that he would be rid of his culpability. His imagination - coupled with his stricken conscience - takes over, as the boy with the magnet becomes of interest to the local authorities. He overhears and misinterprets some information he believes is connected with the boy he stole from. Fearing that he has caused the death of the boy, Johnny runs away.

The Magnet is full of genuine charm. It almost perfectly captures those moments of childhood where we believe we have done great wrong - a usual emotion of guilt, but particularly it is the acquisition of information in these situations that are fundamentally ingrained on our conscience. Johnny's father, Dr Brent (Stephen Murray), is a Jungian Psychoanalyst who attempts to interpret the unusual behaviour of his son, which leads to some interesting asides - this could possibly even be a criticism of this form of psychology, and it's intrinsic hypotheses that all strange behaviours are connected to the parents.

This is by no means the greatest of Ealing Studios output, but it is a delightful story of youth, with a good lead performance from Fox. It is always irresistible to watch old British films, and see an autonomous country that looks individual, before the signs and signifiers of American consumerism invaded and changed the landscape forever.

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A lot of the film was shot in New Brighton, and I have added this to the database as a location. The pier and ferry are no longer there but the Floral Pavilion and Wilkie's fairground (where they try to influence the pinball machine with the magnet) are. The swimming baths where the Miss New Brighton Competition takes place has gone as well. The bike shop was Longworths in Rowson St. You went and chose your bike and Mr Longworth told you to come and collect it next week so he had time to put the seat at the right height, check the brakes,oil it for you and check the tyres.