Movie Description
Street boys throw rocks as the credits for HUE AND CRY appear behind them, among the grafitti on a brick wall. Director Charles Crichton's camera pans across London's Docklands. Joe (Harry Fowler), one of the street boys, reads from a Blood and Thunder comic. Enthralled, he finds he is walking down the streets mentioned in the comic, as the action from the comic appears to unfold before him--a truck with the same number plate stops, men unload large crates looking like those in the comic, a man with a moustache waits outside. With hardly a thought, Joe is spying. He is caught but, after being interviewed by the police, finds he has a job in Covent Garden, and a puzzle to solve.
Joe's gang discovers the comic is being used to send coded messages to London's criminals. Nobody believes them--so they set out to investigate themselves. With fine performances by Fowler, Joan Dowling as the gang's only girl, Alastair Sim as the timid author of the bloodthirsty stories, and Jack Warner as Joe's boss, with T.E.B. Clarke's cunning script and Crichton's direction, HUE AND CRY snowballs from realism to fantastic thriller as it plays out in London's bomb-stricken streets.
| Credits | | Cast: | Alastair Sim, Jack Warner |
Notes
Theatrical release: February 1947.
Shot on location in Central London (including Docklands and Covent Garden) and at Ealing Studios, Ealing, London, England.
Before he wrote HUE AND CRY, T.E.B. Clarke worked on the scripts of four previous Ealing films, including director Charles Crichton’s first movie, FOR THOSE IN PERIL, and the striking DEAD OF NIGHT. HUE AND CRY was Clarke’s first comedy, and it was to provide the model for his later Ealing comedies, which include Crichton’s THE LAVENDER HILL MOB--for which Clarke won an Oscar--Henry Cornelius’s PASSPORT TO PIMLICO, Crichton’s THE TITFIELD THUDERBOLT, and Charles Frend’s BARNACLE BILL.
The music for HUE AND CRY was written by Georges Auric (1899-1983). Auric had a long and very distinguished career as a film music composer. In France, he wrote scores for Max Ophuls and Rene Clair; for Henri-Georges Clouzot, Rene Clement and Jules Dassin; for Roger Vadim and Georges Franju; for Julien Duvivier and Jean Delannoy; and above all for Jean Cocteau. In Britain, in addition to his work with Charles Crichton, he composed music for Jack Clayton, Robert Hamer, Henry Cornelius, and Thorold Dickinson. And the Hollywood directors for whom Auric composed scores included John Huston, Anatole Litvak, Otto Preminger, and William Wyler.
Editorial Reviews
"...Superb....T.E.B. Clarke's script boasts an anarchic strain of humour worthy of Mark Twain..."
Sight and Sound - Geoffrey Macnab (07/01/2003)
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