Hue and Cry (1947)

Hue and Cry
Directed by Charles Crighton
Written by T.E.B. Clarke
1947/UK
Ealing Studios
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Felix H. Wilkinson: Oh, how I loathe adventurous-minded boys.[/box]

This is said to be the first of the Ealing comedies.  My only real complaint is that my beloved Alistair Sim doesn’t appear in every scene.

A gang of kids spends its days playing at cops and robbers on the rubble of bombed-out post-War London.  They are all addicted to adventure comics, particularly the ones in “Trump” magazine.  One of the older boys is reading the magazine when he spots a car with the same license plate number as in one of the stories.  He thinks the car was used in a crime and reports it.  The policeman says no such number exists but likes the boy and gets him a job working at the Chelsea food market as a porter.

Some other similarities between real life and the comic occur and since no one will believe him, he looks up the comic’s writer, Felix H. Wilkinson (Sim).  It soon develops that someone is changing details in the comic and using it as code for criminal operations.  The boys and girls set to work in foiling the plot.

There are funnier Ealing comedies.  The main reasons to see this one are Alistair Sims’s two very funny scenes and to get a good view of London immediately after the Blitz. It’s also not a bad way to spend an hour and 15 minutes.

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