À cor et à cri

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.

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.

Eccentric boys' adventure writer Felix H Wilkinson (Sim) has his copy - "The Enthralling Adventures of Selwyn Pike and his Youthful Assistant Smiler" - altered by master crooks, using a special code through the pages of kids' comic 'Trump'. Only sharp-eyed schoolboy Joe Kirby (Fowler) seems to have noticed, but fails to convince a sceptical Detective Inspector Ford (Lambert).

Undeterred, Kirby enlists the help of a gang of bombsite-dwelling little cockneys, the self-styled 'Blood and Thunder Boys' to up-end the criminals' dastardly plans. Wilkinson is persuaded to alter his copy and catch the robbers, headed by Kirby's boss Nightingale (Warner, cast against type as a baddie), and Trump secretary Rhona Watson (White).

Originally billed with the slogan, "The Ealing film that begs to differ", Hue And Cry is less a comedy (actually, it's Ealing Studios' first acknowledged 'comedy') than a thrilling adventure story for older kids; the occasional punch-up scenes are peculiarly realistic. Director Crichton weaves a fantastic, but bizarrely believable yarn, helped no end by his unsentimental, dedicated cast.

The standout performer is Sim, whose potty writer, despite limited screen time, pretty much waltzes off with the entire picture - whether he's castigating the crooks ("The insolent scoundrels, they've purloined one of my codes - the very code I invented for the 'Case of the Limping Skeleton!'") or tremulously backing out of the deal ("Remember what happened to Nicky the Narc in the 'Case of the Creeping Death'?").

Acclaimed cinematographer Dougie Slocombe makes great use of post-Blitz London locations, including Holborn Viaduct, Docklands, and Covent Garden - particularly for the climactic scenes of hundreds of boys teeming Battleship Potemkin-fashion down the capital's steps toward the scene of the crime. While an almost incidental scene of a small boy re-enacting an aerial dogfight on a bombsite leaves viewers in no doubt about the psychological impact of the World War II on a new generation.

Generally reckoned to be the first 'Ealing' comedy,a fondly-regarded series of gentle,humorous satires of British life in the late 1940's-early 1950's,this is actually more of a rowdy,fast-paced crime caper than what gradually developed to the above familiar style of this famous film studio.However,it is none the worse for that,with an amusing script and speedy direction by Ealing veterans TEB Clarke and Charles Crichton,and efficient performances by a mostly teenage cast.Looking from a 21st Century viewpoint,it is an astonishing fact how UK teens dressed (in dull tweed suits) and behaved (no guns,knives or bad language) in the pre-rock n' roll era;in this more cynical day and age,it would be the adults stopping the kids committing crime rather than vice versa.This actually helps the film in giving it a quaint period charm which will never be recaptured,as is the well-photographed scenes of war-torn London.Alastair Sim is billed first but the real leading man is inimitable cockney actor Harry Fowler,while the usually genial Jack Warner (a little uncomfortably) is the main adult protagonist,a ruthless villain;Sim is enjoyably buffoonish as a cartoonist,but his is basically a minor character and little seen despite his top billing. The highlight is the final battle between the criminal gang and London street urchins who seem to swarm over their prey like soldier ants.The sequence is funny,exhilarating,thrilling and even spectacular.

HUE AND CRY isn't the best Ealing comedy,and not necessarily the most typical,but despite dated elements is still largely very enjoyable and pleasantly nostalgic for older film-goers.

RATING:7 and a half out of 10.

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.