Monday 8th April
CINEMA FROM THE RUBBLE: THE POST-WAR POLITICS OF EALING STUDIOS
Benedict Morrison
Ealing Studios is often hailed as the most quintessentially English of all film studios. Run by Sir Michael Balcon for decades, the studio reached its zenith in 1949, its annus mirabilis, releasing Passport to Pimlico, Whisky Galore!, and Kind Hearts and Coronets. Now most celebrated for these and the similarly magnificent comedies that followed, Ealing’s films have a reputation for cosiness, whimsicality, and an ever-so gentle subversiveness. This talk revisits these films and reads them again, this time in the light of the post-war new waves that were beginning to emerge across Europe. Ealing films – like the masterpieces of Italian neo-realism – are films set amongst the ruins, documenting the lives of citizens in bombed cities. Viewed as comedies of rubble, they take on a far more serious set of meanings than their whimsical reputation suggests.