Ealing was one of only three major pre-war studios to continue production throughout
World War II and, like Alexander Korda's London Films, it devoted much of its
output to films designed to promote the war effort. But what distinguished
Ealing's war films was their increasing dedication to realism, and the way in
which they came to take an inclusive approach, with men - and women - united
across class and regional divides against a common enemy.
In the
studio's early war films, like Ships With Wings (d. Sergei Nolbandov,
1941), clipped-voiced, stiff upper-lipped officer types predominated. But the
films later began to reflect a more complex picture, emphasising the
contribution of 'ordinary' men and women, and even expressing a widespread
feeling that a complacent ruling class was failing to recognise the very real
risk of losing the war.
One
reason for the change was the arrival of Harry Watt and Alberto Cavalcanti from
the Crown Film Unit. The two brought with them the sensibilities of the
documentary movement, and were to have a major influence on the Ealing style.
Watt's
Nine Men (1943), made on a tiny budget, managed to turn a patch of sand
dunes in North Wales into a convincing North Africa. After the death of the
senior officer, a ramshackle unit of regionally diverse, mostly working-class
men is left to pull together to defeat a barely-seen foe; in the end, the film is as
much about solidarity as conflict. Cavalcanti's Went the Day Well? (1942)
took a more extraordinary story - a German invasion of a small English village -
but what was most striking was the unmelodramatic way in which the villagers'
counterattack was shown: brave and heroic, certainly, but also brutal and
bloody. San Demetrio London (d. Charles Frend, 1943) re-enacted a true
story from earlier in the war in a way which applied documentary style to
dramatic effect.
The
championing of 'ordinary' heroes was matched by an often explicit criticism of
authority. In The Foreman Went to France (d. Charles Frend, 1942),
the hero's unquestioning trust of authority figures nearly scuppers his mission,
as each one he meets turns out to be a Nazi collaborator. Similarly, in Went
the Day Well?, the well-spoken, impeccably polite army Captain is in fact a
Nazi, while the highly respected village leader is revealed as a German spy.
Ealing's comedians, too, were pressed into service in the name of propaganda. Will Hay and George Formby cheered British audiences and warned of traitors at home,
while Tommy Trinder lightened up more 'serious' films like The Foreman Went to France and The Bells Go Down (d. Basil Dearden, 1943).
By 1944,
Ealing's filmmakers were already looking beyond the war, to the kind of Britain
they hoped to build when the fighting was over. Basil Dearden's Halfway
House and They Came to a City (both 1944) use fantastical scenarios to evoke Britain's internal conflicts and, implicitly, ask questions about how such divisions might be healed. These were questions which were already on many
lips.
Mark Duguid
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