I SO would have loved this movie as a kid; but being far too young, I'm now only getting into these lesser known Ealings as a middle-aged film lover. Hue & Cry is part of the Ealing Comedy DVD Collection.

From what I've heard from older folk and relatives about the just post- war years, this yarn is plain good old fashioned fun, but one for the boys only, whatever their age. With bombed-out London their playground and comics their fantastical relief, young boys run around pursuing adventure at every turn. This is where I get my Angels with Dirty Faces connection from.

A few disgruntled viewers say that Hue & Cry lacks focus and central characters. This is true - a boy's adventure never runs to plan and if it does, you change it! But, seen as the first Ealing comedy proper, the Studio is still finding its feet and is gathering talented people to direct (Charles Chricton, who directed many BIG Ealings) screenwriters (T.E.B Clarke, who is synonymous with Ealing) and one very accomplished cinematographer, Douglas Slocombe, who here manages some Hitchcockian imagery - such as on a spiral staircase and in a room full of circus dummies. Otherwise, it's brisk, the camera darting about, with a film score every bit as vibrant as the escapades.

No-one ever, though, denies the pull and special attraction of Alistair Sim as the eccentric Comic strip creator, a Scrooge-like hermit living at the top of those scary stairs. That he isn't on screen very much just happens to be one of those things, relish him when he is on, that's all you can do.

The story, now, to an adult takes second fiddle - lots of boyish conspiracies and such, avoiding the police and the occasional fight. Something about a missing page in their favourite comic and they have to use passwords and such, getting caught in gangster Jack Warner's wide- boy gangsterish crook (as far cry from his beloved Dixon of Dock Green!). It is the sights - and sounds - of an almost alien London, only a generation ago that makes it all so watchable - and enjoyable. Unlike today, with our comparatively lazy and health and safety pampered youth, these boy actors literally pour gusto and energy into everything, swarming over a rubbled landscape like herds of buffalo in a western.

The sound is often a bit thin and distorted but the picture quality not as bad as it could be, a little lacking in punch perhaps but surprisingly blemish-free.

This film is tremendous good fun, from the deliberately zany credit sequence onwards, and still goes down a treat with the youngsters at a Saturday morning matinée. A good deal of it really is pretty funny on a laugh-out-loud level, although it's not a comedy as such -- the jokes are generally in the throw-away lines and visual gags rather than in the plot as such, which is more of a children's adventure story. (It's notable to a modern eye that in the 1940s, the adolescent heroes of this story are all at work and earning in their mid-teens: there's one sequence at the end where we see what is basically a montage of all the different potential boys' jobs in London, from the BBC to the G.P.O. via the ice-cream trade!)

The story is the classic Enid Blyton/Anthony Buckeridge-style tale of the over-imaginative child who stumbles upon genuine villainy and perceives it in terms of an unsophisticated thriller, only for the adults, unsurprisingly, not to believe a word. The plausibility does get strained a bit when it transpires that all the exotic villains listed in the pulp-fiction stories of "The Trump" are genuine London criminals under the command of the sinister mastermind, not to mention the fact that all the authority figures in the film turn out to be in on the plot, but it's a good, fast-moving production that bears a strong resemblance to children's books of the era and presumably appealed to the same audience. I was actually surprised to find the film unexpectedly sophisticated: it offers considerable enjoyment on an adult level and I wonder how many children even at the time would have got all the comic allusions. (It is also remarkable as one of the few films of any genre where a vehicle crashes over the edge and *doesn't* burst into flames!)

To the modern eye, of course, the location shooting also offers a fascinating document of a world that has all but utterly disappeared, from Covent Garden to the post-war bomb-sites, and a society that has gone with it, from bus conductors to milk-carts. Alistair Sim has an entertaining cameo as a timid writer of thrilling tales, but the film is mainly carried by the boys, who are by and large very natural in their acting style. Harry Fowler in the lead is particularly good.

This is a well-made little film that plays tricks with its genre and with its audience's expectations and deserves a wider reputation: I knew it only from a few seconds' montage in a documentary on Ealing Studios, and it is far less widely available than their famous later output. The Ealing film of which I was reminded most closely -- perhaps because of a similar setting -- was actually "Passport to Pimlico", although this is clearly pitched at a younger audience.

The Trump!

Forgotten, under seen or not very good? Either way Hue & Cry is a very important film in the pantheon of Ealing Studios. Blending comedy with that of a children's thriller, this would be the launching pad for the long string of Ealing classics that would follow. Nobody at the time would know of its importance, nor did head guru Micahel Balcon have ideas to steer the studio in the direction that it would take, thus practically inventing its own genre of film.

In truth, it's a scratchy film, admittedly one with moments of class and social hilarity, nifty set-ups and ever likable young actors, but it's a bit too wrought to fully work, the odd blend of comic book values and crime busting youths is never at one for a fully rounded spectacle. But the hints of greatness are there, an awareness of the times, the half bombed London backdrop, the send-ups of Hollywood conventions, and the irrepressible Alastair Sim a forerunner of many eccentrics to follow.

Hue & Cry is a fine and decent viewing experience, and perhaps it's harsh to judge it against "those" bona fide classics coming up along the rails? But really it's more for historical values to seek it out and it's not an Ealing film you would recommend to a newcomer wanting to acquaint themselves with that most brilliant of British studios. 6.5/10