L'aimant

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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Ealing often sent their crews to exotic locations and the claim in the opening credits that this fanciful whimsy was filmed at Ealing Studios - unusually without Alec Guinness - is ironically promptly contradicted by its's vivid rendering by cameraman Lionel Banes of the Merseyside locations around which a young 'William' Fox (as he was then called) is pursued; although Banes does also do an atmospheric job on the interiors.

This is a delightful film about a young boy growing up in a small riverside town,just across from Liverpool, in 1950.He experiences guilt after conning a younger boy out of a magnet and wrongly believing that this has lead to the other boy's death.Humour is provided by the boy's father a psychiatrist/psychologist who has a theory and an answer for everything, unfortunately these are usually wrong. Lots of nostalgia for those of us brought up at that time and place:New Brighton Pier and Lido;Mersey Ferry and Dockland Overhead Railway;Blitzed Area of Liverpool below Anglican Cathedral;Biscuits being delivered in large tin boxes.

Most memorable scene:Liverpool/Chinese boy(played by Geoffrey Yin)- When his mother shouts at him in Chinese from a window,he turns to his friends and says "Me mam sez I've gotta ave mi tea" ...in a strong Liverpool accent.

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.

After a characteristically stressful Physiology exam, decided to settle down with a movie, and what better than an offering from that beloved British institution, Ealing Studios? 'The Magnet (1950)' is one of the studio's lesser-known comedies, but ranks among their most charming efforts. The film is directed by Charles Frend, who also commandeered the excellent 'A Run for Your Money (1949)' – which succeeded despite being a veiled reworking of Capra's 'Mr Deeds Goes to Town (1936).' In 'The Magnet,' resourceful youth Johnny Brent (William Fox) cheats another boy out of an expensive magnet, before realising that this sin might eventually catch up to him. His attempts to dispose of the magnet are humorously futile, until he unloads the stolen object onto a kindly engineer, who interprets the gift as a noble gesture of Dickensian kindness. While little Johnny worries that his crime will be the death of him, his anxious parents (Stephen Murray and Kay Walsh) become concerned about his odd behaviour. The father, a trained psychiatrist, attempts to apply Jungian psychoanalysis to his son, and smugly reaches an entirely erroneous conclusion. This pleasant, easy-going film has all the hallmarks of an Ealing classic, with a particularly excellent and likable performance from its young star.