Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 268: Mon Sep 30

Hue and Cry (Crichton, 1947): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 6.15pm


This 35mm presentation is part of the excellent Martin Scorsese's Hidden gems of British Cinema season at BFI Southbank. Details here.

Time Out review:
Reminiscent of Emil and the Detectives as a gang of East End kids excitedly realise that their favourite blood-and-thunder comic is being used as a means of communication by crooks, and (since the police turn a deaf ear) set out in hot pursuit. One of Ealing's first postwar successes, it is given an enormous boost by locations around the bomb sites of London's East End and by Alastair Sim's sinister eccentricities as the author of the serial in question. Its charm, in these days of headlines about kids and video nasties, is of another world: capturing a blonde moll (Valerie White) and requiring information, the gang subject her to the most vicious tortures they can think of - tickling by feather (which doesn't work) and menace by white mouse (which does).
Tom Milne

Here (and above) is the trailer.

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