Alastair Sim Felix H. Wilkinson Jack Warner (I) Mr Nightingale Frederick Piper Mr. Kirby, Joe's Father Valerie White Rhona Davis/Rhona Watson Vida Hope Mrs. Kirby, Joe's Mother Heather Delaine Dorrie Kirby Jack Lambert (II) Detective Inspector Ford Harry Fowler (II) Joe Kirby Cinematography by Douglas Slocombe Produced by Michael Balcon for Ealing Studios [uk] Directed by Charles Crichton Distributed by General Film Distributors (GFD) Ltd. [uk]
'Ealing comedies, wrote Sir Michael Balcon in his memoirs, 'began with Hue and Cry ..
Shown one wet, cold February in 1947, with rationing still the rule, fuel short and half London apparently made of bomb rubble, what this glorious little comedy brought to the austere scene was the ingrained gift of laughter- and more.
It set the trend of Ealing films over the next ten years towards comedies that used reality as a runway to take off into fantasy.
Much of the story was shot on blitzed sites in the very shadow of proud old surviving St Paul's, in dockland, on riverside wharves, in Covent Garden markets, in the City, even down the London sewers - the film today has a rich topographical rarity to add to its lasting entertainment values.
The story starts in the head of an East End boy, played by Harry Fowler, who tells his mum over tea that he's on the track of a criminal gang and the CID may need his help "You've got a bit of sausage on your chin," Mum shuts him up.
But daydreams will out. Suddenly Joe finds his favourite comic strip being used for coded messages by a gang of fur thieves. He and his mates trap the gang - then send out rallying calls to boys all over the town and suddenly London seems as engulfed by boys as Hamelin was by rats.
T.E.B. Clarke wrote Hue and Cry, and Charles Crichton directed it, in the days before the species 'teenager' was as common as it is now; and it's an eye opener to see just how many different varieties, shapes and trades of boyhood come running to the call for help that goes out by every means, including the strait-laced BBC of those days.
Alastair Sim plays the comic-strip artist with his own grotesque touch and fans of P.C. Dixon (of Dock Green) will discover that there was a time when Jack Warner actually played villains.
'What splendidly preposterous nonsense!' critic C.A. Lejeune wrote then. It still is.
ALEXANDER WALKER 'One of the most hilarious and clever comedies I have seen! THE PEOPLE
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This page was last updated 02 Dec 2002
