Listonixio Fresh and Exciting

Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

Crwthod A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

Borserie it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

Spikeopath The Trump!Forgotten, under seen or not very good? Either way Hue & Cry is a very important film in the pantheon of Ealing Studios. Blending comedy with that of a children's thriller, this would be the launching pad for the long string of Ealing classics that would follow. Nobody at the time would know of its importance, nor did head guru Micahel Balcon have ideas to steer the studio in the direction that it would take, thus practically inventing its own genre of film.In truth, it's a scratchy film, admittedly one with moments of class and social hilarity, nifty set-ups and ever likable young actors, but it's a bit too wrought to fully work, the odd blend of comic book values and crime busting youths is never at one for a fully rounded spectacle. But the hints of greatness are there, an awareness of the times, the half bombed London backdrop, the send-ups of Hollywood conventions, and the irrepressible Alastair Sim a forerunner of many eccentrics to follow.Hue & Cry is a fine and decent viewing experience, and perhaps it's harsh to judge it against "those" bona fide classics coming up along the rails? But really it's more for historical values to seek it out and it's not an Ealing film you would recommend to a newcomer wanting to acquaint themselves with that most brilliant of British studios. 6.5/10

Eric Grobb I particularly enjoyed seeing London in its derelict state after WW2, I remember my parents taking me there in those days and seeing piles of bricks everywhere. It was amusing to read a review by an American academic whose main complaint was that the children were all white and there should have been a better balance with black children. I wonder where he thought Ealing Studios might have found such people in 1946/7 - the Empire Windrush did not arrive at Tilbury until June 1948. Indeed looking at the devastation in London in the film it is amazing that Ealing could make anything. This is something that i watched as a kid and have seen many, many times again.

Igenlode Wordsmith This film is tremendous good fun, from the deliberately zany credit sequence onwards, and still goes down a treat with the youngsters at a Saturday morning matinée. A good deal of it really is pretty funny on a laugh-out-loud level, although it's not a comedy as such -- the jokes are generally in the throw-away lines and visual gags rather than in the plot as such, which is more of a children's adventure story. (It's notable to a modern eye that in the 1940s, the adolescent heroes of this story are all at work and earning in their mid-teens: there's one sequence at the end where we see what is basically a montage of all the different potential boys' jobs in London, from the BBC to the G.P.O. via the ice-cream trade!) The story is the classic Enid Blyton/Anthony Buckeridge-style tale of the over-imaginative child who stumbles upon genuine villainy and perceives it in terms of an unsophisticated thriller, only for the adults, unsurprisingly, not to believe a word. The plausibility does get strained a bit when it transpires that all the exotic villains listed in the pulp-fiction stories of "The Trump" are genuine London criminals under the command of the sinister mastermind, not to mention the fact that all the authority figures in the film turn out to be in on the plot, but it's a good, fast-moving production that bears a strong resemblance to children's books of the era and presumably appealed to the same audience. I was actually surprised to find the film unexpectedly sophisticated: it offers considerable enjoyment on an adult level and I wonder how many children even at the time would have got all the comic allusions. (It is also remarkable as one of the few films of any genre where a vehicle crashes over the edge and *doesn't* burst into flames!)To the modern eye, of course, the location shooting also offers a fascinating document of a world that has all but utterly disappeared, from Covent Garden to the post-war bomb-sites, and a society that has gone with it, from bus conductors to milk-carts. Alistair Sim has an entertaining cameo as a timid writer of thrilling tales, but the film is mainly carried by the boys, who are by and large very natural in their acting style. Harry Fowler in the lead is particularly good.This is a well-made little film that plays tricks with its genre and with its audience's expectations and deserves a wider reputation: I knew it only from a few seconds' montage in a documentary on Ealing Studios, and it is far less widely available than their famous later output. The Ealing film of which I was reminded most closely -- perhaps because of a similar setting -- was actually "Passport to Pimlico", although this is clearly pitched at a younger audience.

greadman When I was a 'nippah', I used to go to the cinema on a Saturday Morning, this was one of the films that they showed. It made an impact on me that I always watch it again and again.A film made in the bombed out post-war east London. It was a proto brat-pack movie (watch out for a very adolescent Anthony Newley). This film is a treasure and a classic that transcends time and generations. The plot is around a bank robbery, but around this are the bombed out scenes of the East End of London, in which the kids made their playground. These scenes are contrasted with the bright, sparkling and summery photography. There are many memorable scenes. Such as the boy re-enacting an aerial dogfight on a bombsite. He makes noises of aircraft, machines-guns, flak and bombs. These are complemented by his gestures. This scene has a genuine intensity to it, the war had obviously made an impact on him, and this intensity is shared. The other scene is that when the group of youth have to negotiate the sewer, we are shown into a subterraenean world. This had to be filmed on location, how could you build a sewer in the studio on a limited budget?. There is also the other scene where the gang manage to trap one of the female villains, they extract the necessary information from her by one of the boys threatening to unleash one of his pet white mice on her.