Sparrows Can't Sing

Derived from her own Stratford East stage show, this Joan Littlewood film apparently did no better than its non celluloid counterpart. Now it appears fresh, confident and so evocative but I have never seen it before and like many, I suppose, wouldn't have been the slightest bit interested at age 16 in 1963 with the Beatles and all that was to follow. Seen now, however, with all that location shooting and streets that are gone depicted so well. And what irony! The fabulous extended opening shows our hero/villain returning from sea to find his wife and cannot even find his house. Bulldozed slums, replaced by brand new 18 storey blocks of flats and even they bulldozed in turn in 2000. Back to the film and it is non stop believable banter and jesting. The film does not let up once and only in the final splendid sequence in the pub do we see a trace of the theatrical origins. For anyone who has ever visited or lived in London, absolutely essential. For every one else, well worth seeing to get just a glimpse of the old East End and just an inkling of what it really was once like when everybody seemed to know almost everyone else.

As distinct from East Enders PC version..Get the impression that things really were like that in a neighbourhood where people still.spoke and looked English! Would like to see Lionel.Bart's musical version and wish Joan Littlewood had made more films!

I saw this film when it first came out; it got very bad reviews at the time and most of my friends hated it, but I loved it then and have been haunted by the theme song ever since. For a while it was impossible to find any references to it--in fact, this is the first database where I have found the title or any information about it, though I have checked a number of commercial sites trying to find it on video. I still remember it as a charming (somewhat sentimental) and very funny comedy of a type that the British film industry did very well at that time. More recently their best work is more in a surreal or caricatural mode (such as _Cold Comfort Farm_, which is brilliant in its own way), but _The Full Monty_ caught some of the charm of the kind of comedies of everyday life that I think _Sparrows Can't Sing_ was one of. Now I just wish I could see it again.

"Awful stuff, Painful to sit through" - I agree. This has nothing to make it worth watching other than a few period details, such as the prices on the fruit and veg stall, the the outside lavatory (Roy Kinnear uses it) and the streets, although people of a certain generation who enjoyed "On The Buses", "Man About The House" and George & Mildred" might like seeing the early work of the actors who appeared in those television series.

Quite simply good or bad its a time capsule of once upon a time in London and great English Actors.