Whitechapel (film)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Whitechapel |
| Original title | It Always Rains on Sunday |
| Country of production | United Kingdom |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1947 |
| length | 92 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Robert Hamer |
| script |
Angus MacPhail Robert Hamer Henry Cornelius |
| production | Michael Balcon |
| music | Georges Auric |
| camera | Douglas Slocombe |
| cut | Michael Truman |
| occupation | |
| |
Whitechapel , also known as The Escape from Scotland Yard , is a British crime drama from 1947 directed by Robert Hamer and starring Googie Withers and John McCallum, influenced by American film noir and Italian neorealism . Both actors married soon after filming ended. The film is based on the novel It Always Rains on Sunday by Arthur La Bern , the original author of Alfred Hitchcock's late work Frenzy .
action
The following events take place on March 23, 1947, on a Sunday in the dreary East End of London , which was once hard hit by the Battle of Britain . It's raining again and everything in this British slum is gray on gray. The aftermath of the war has left its mark on this area with its impoverished lower-class inhabitants. The traces of German bombings are far from gone everywhere, and food is still being rationed. In Coronet Grove, George Sandigate, who lives in cramped living conditions with his family, an upright man with a common face, sees his young daughter Vi fall out of a car in the early hours of the morning. In a nearby coffee shop, three demolished guys, the scoundrels Whitey, Dicey and Freddie, are preparing for a not exactly legal job. When morning wakes up, the former bartender Rose Sandigate, who is married to the much older George, a rather shrill person and the complete opposite of Sugar Daddy George, wakes up her older daughter Doris so that she prepares tea and gets the morning paper. The main news this Sunday morning is that convict Tommy Swann escaped from Dartmoor penitentiary where he was serving a four-year prison sentence for armed robbery. Tommy was once Rose's fiancé, whom she met while working at the local pub. Rose remembers her time with Tommy and the ring he gave her shortly before he was arrested.
Despite the upsetting news for Rose, this Sunday will be celebrated like any other, because no one has any idea what the family will face today. As usual, there is already tensions between families at the breakfast table. Rose gets up and goes to the former air raid shelter to get old blackout material from wartime. There she discovers Tommy, to her astonishment, who is hiding here. She promises to help and returns to the kitchen. When she is under great internal tension, she has to try everything so that her behavior does not arouse suspicion or provoke questions from her family. Meanwhile, everyone else has the usual Sunday rituals: son Alfie goes to play, George takes a bath, Doris is preparing for a day trip and Vi plans to meet the guy from whose sports car she climbed again this morning. When the road is finally free, Rose secretly smuggles her ex-lover up into the apartment. Here she provides him with food and fresh clothes. Tommy asks Rose first for money. When Rose offers him her ring from yesteryear, which is kept in her drawer, he is grateful. However, Swann can no longer remember whether and how much importance the piece of jewelry once had for Rose. Meanwhile, Vi has met with sports car driver Morry Hyams, a band leader and local music shop owner who regularly cheats on his wife. Vi enters his shop to accept last night's invitation. Doris meets with Morry's brother Lou in his arcade, but rejects his advances. She prefers her rather sedate, but with a real job, friend to the windy Lou. The son of Sandigate family, Alfie, tried one of music dealers Morry Maultrommel extort, when he saw him canoodling with the little sister Vi and now threatens to tell on both with his parents.
The district police are currently pursuing two cases: the search for Swann and the investigation of a robbery from the previous night. During their investigations they come across a number of curious to dubious types, including the owner of a cheap dump, the inept petty crooks Whitey, Dicey and Freddie, and Slopey Collins, the local reporter. Meanwhile, Rose continues to worry that someone could discover that her ex is hiding up in the bedroom. He is almost discovered several times, first by Vi, then by Doris. Like a gun dog, Rose makes sure no one enters the bedroom. As evening falls, George leaves the house to take part in a darts match. Now at last Tommy Swann could safely leave the house again if Rose didn't think about getting together with her ex again. Things get moving soon, because the smart reporter Slopey has found out where Swann is hiding and goes to the Sandigates. Alfie opens the door for him, and when Rose shoves her boy back into bed, Swann hurries past Slopey. With that his hiding place is broken. A chase begins. The police are on the trail of the escaped escapee and conveniently also cross the paths of the guys who committed the robbery last night, including the murderer Whitey. Meanwhile, in her great desperation, Rose tries to kill herself in the kitchen by turning on the gas stove. The police, in the form of police inspector Detective Sergeant Fothergill, finally arrest Swann in a freight yard and arrest him. Faithful but somewhat simple-minded George visits his rose in the hospital and asks her to recover soon. Then he returns home under a clear sky through the wet streets of Whitechapel.
Production notes
Whitechapel was written on location in London in 1947 and premiered on November 25, 1947. The German premiere took place on July 23, 1948.
Henry Cornelius took over the production management. Duncan Sutherland designed the film structures. Stanley Black arranged the dance music.
Reviews
The film was enthusiastically received by British critics when it premiered in 1947, as the German Neue Filmwelt 9/1948 reported on the occasion of the German screening. The other reviews were also consistently positive. Below are several examples:
In the mirror it was said: “With Whitechapel, the London district, cinematically attractive images are connected, such as the underworld, stolen goods, police and gangster prosecution. There is also something of everything in it. In the end, there was even the great hunt for a prisoner who had escaped and criss-crossed a marshalling yard that was wet at night. But that was not the point for production manager Michael Balcon and director Robert Hamer. The British film industry is struggling for a new, unsensational realism ... It tries to get on the track of everyday life and its strict size, in conscious contrast to the operetta-like, routine smelt of Hollywood and in the hope of achieving the graceful chamber art of the French. It is a type of film that experts cannot ignore. But it is not the last moment in it that even the artistically undemanding can be carried away, the people who go to the cinema because it always rains on Sundays. "
"The definitive British film noir."
"Let me offer the simplest of compliments, and say that [this film] has the persuasiveness of an exciting, professionally told story."
The lexicon of the international film judges: "Crime film with a precise description of the British-middle-class family life in the eponymous London suburb."
The Movie & Video Guide saw the film as "a mosaic of characters intertwined in a desolate London neighborhood".
Halliwell's Film Guide stated, “Influential slumland melodrama, now out of date…. but electrifyingly alive in its time and very well made ”.
Individual evidence
- ^ Whitechapel review in "Der Spiegel" of July 31, 1948
- ^ Whitechapel. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2020 .
- ^ Leonard Maltin : Movie & Video Guide, 1996 edition, p. 652
- ^ Leslie Halliwell : Halliwell's Film Guide, Seventh Edition, New York 1989, p. 524
Web links
- Whitechapel in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- It Always Rains On Sunday on screenonline.org