Cinema from the rubble: the post-war politics of Ealing Studios

Run by Sir Michael Balcon for decades, the studio reached its zenith in 1949, its annus mirabilis, releasing Passport to Pimlico, Whisky Galore!, and Kind Hearts and Coronets. Now most celebrated for these and the similarly magnificent comedies that followed, Ealing's films have a reputation for cosiness, whimsicality, and an ever-so gentle subversiveness. This talk revisits these films and reads them again, this time in the light of the post-war new waves that were beginning to emerge across Europe. Ealing films – like the masterpieces of Italian neo-realism – are films set amongst the ruins, documenting the lives of citizens in bombed cities. Viewed as comedies of rubble, they take on a far more serious set of meanings than their whimsical reputation suggests.

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THE ARTS SOCIETY ACCREDITED LECTURER

Dr Benedict Morrison

Benedict Morrison is a lecturer in Literature and Film at the University of Exeter. He has recently published a book entitled Complicating Articulation in Art Cinema with Oxford University Press and is now producing works on post-war British comedy films, the response by the arts and humanities to Covid-19, and cultural narratives of extinction. He spent seven years studying at the University of Oxford, but finally traded the dreaming spires for the cultural bustle of London, where he lives with his partner. He loves nothing more than settling down in the darkness of a cinema to enjoy a great film.

GALLERY