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The last completed work by Powell and Pressburger comes across as something
like a colourful and inventive schools programme that tells an entertaining story in order to get across simple lessons in the science of electricity. Adult viewers of this children's feature might expect subtextual messages among the eccentricity, but try as one might to find coded messages about TV-addicted youngsters or the monarchy, perhaps it really is just the story of a boy who
loses his pet mouse in the Tower of London and learns some science while in a
dream. The strongest clue of its place in the whimsical tradition is the name of
the missing mouse - Alice - even if the film lacks Lewis Carroll's satirical edge.
The Archers (aided by their faithful cinematographer Christopher Challis)
couldn't hope to achieve their customary visual spectacle on a miserly Children's Film Foundation
budget, but the sight of an entirely yellow tube train coming into a station is
memorable. Elsewhere, the team are left to struggle with rudimentary lighting
and, often, live sound recording. The editing is far crisper than expected of a
CFF feature, however, and there are brief, if sometimes unfathomable, visual
conceits and jokes. Beefeaters seen enjoying beef sandwiches is a good, obvious
one, but the meaning - if there is one - of the sequence in which John writes
down the prospective wages of an underground driver is more obscure.
More directly educational than perhaps any other CFF film, it's also one of
the most entertaining, eschewing dialogue and plot for visuals. This probably
accounts for its popularity with the wide age range of CFF audiences who voted
it a 'Chiffy' winner several times. Apparent disagreements with the CFF board,
however, would mean that Powell and Pressburger produced no further CFF
films.
Shown on television over Christmas 1984, as the first CFF feature to be
presented by the BBC, The Boy Who Turned Yellow remains a well remembered entry
that also helped launch a new generation of armchair-bound CFF
enthusiasts.
Alistair McGown
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1. Turned yellow (3:12)
Production stills
