Ealing Comedies: Hue & Cry (1947)

One of the iconic Ealing Comedies to use a post-war London as it’s stage set for the entire Film Hue & Cry is about a gang of London kids called “The Blood and Thunder Boys” whose leader, Joe finds a copy of “The Trump” as it floats out of a church window.

Joe absentmindedly wanders reading “The Trump” until he notices some of the details in the comic are happening before his very eyes.

The Cinematography is by Douglas Slocombe who had a keen eye for memorable  Black and White shots, such as the roof scene in “Hue & Cry” and “The Lavender Hill Mob”.   

 

The design of Ealing’s posters are amazing since they would be first thing you see when visiting movie theatres with their explosions of simple and effective designs in bright colours. I particularly like that the large Baddie is

obviously a baddie because he’s wearing a stripey “Crook” style jumper.

The second part of the poster shows others boys running into the design to correlate with a scene where an intern for BBC Radio gives the Newsreader a card during broadcast so that are more boys to overpower the baddies with “The Blood and Thunder Boys.”

Although it seems like some of the actors were trying to hard to act as if they were common Londoners their accents were almost unnoticeably good.

Trivia

The plot involves the non-existence of the vehicle registration mark GZ used by the crooks. This did in fact exist at the time, but it was in use in Belfast. Might have been seen in London, but would have been unusual.

I would give it 

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