By the late 1940s, the Gainsborough melodramas began to lose popularity, giving way to a new light-hearted genre of films in the Ealing Studios comedies produced by Sir Michael Balcon. These particular films often suggested a nostalgia for an old-fashioned Britain. According to Jeffrey Richards in Best of British, they portrayed a world that is “essentially quaint, cosy, whimsical.”
Ealing Studios
In the 1953 film, The Titfield Thunderbolt, a local community work together to save their railway line from being closed by British Rail. Their amusing antics in achieving their objective also result in the delight of defying the local authority. It is the kind of film that portrays people happily working together for the common good in a post-war Britain.
One of the last of the great Ealing comedies is The Ladykillers, made in 1955. This is a black comedy about a widow who rents her upstairs room to a Professor who regularly entertains his friends, ostensibly to play music together. They are actually thieves planning a robbery. The widow eventually discovers their plan, so they need to kill her. Unable to do it, they all end up dead by various means. When the widow tries to return the money to the police, they don’t believe her and she ends up the richer.
1950s British Comedy Films and Norman Wisdom
Apart from those from the Ealing Studios, many other comedy films were shown throughout the 1950s. Some were in the same tradition of nostalgia, such as Genevieve in 1953. The London to Brighton Car Rally gives the two middle-class couples, competing in their vintage cars, the opportunity for plenty of humorous situations in the English countryside.
In addition to the popular St Trinian’s Films and the Doctor in the House series, both from 1954, one cinema star to emerge in the ‘50s was Norman Wisdom. Using a combination of slapstick and sentiment, Trouble in Store, in 1953, introduced Wisdom’s particular brand of comedy chaos. Richard Dacre in his article, ‘Traditions of British Comedy’, in The British Cinema Book, suggests that Norman Wisdom went on to become “the most successful of all the post-war screen clowns.”
Carry On Films
One of the most enduring series of British comedy films began with Carry on Sergeant in 1957. These films were generally less nostalgic and less innocent than the Ealing type comedies, especially as the series progressed into the 1960s, although they often had their roots in seaside postcard and music hall humour. Yet this first film still showed a moral restraint compared to their later, more suggestive comedies which were often a parody of popular genres like spy films and history.
Each of the films starred a cast of popular actors, such as Kenneth Williams, Charles Hawtrey and Hattie Jacques. Other stars gradually joined the films, such as Joan Sims in Carry On Nurse in 1959. This continued throughout the 1960s, with Barbara Windsor joining Carry on Spying in 1964.
By the end of the 1950s, a ‘New Wave’ period was sweeping across British cinema, with the first of the ‘kitchen sink’ realistic drama films. But the 1950s introduced some great comedy films to British audiences that continue to be shown and enjoyed for their nostalgia value on television today.
References:
Aldgate, Anthony and Jeffrey Richards, Best of British: Cinema and Society from 1930 to the Present (London: IB Taurus, 1999)
Barr, Charles, ed., All Our Yesterdays (London: British Film Institute, 1986)
Murphy, Robert, ed., The British Cinema Book (London: British Film Institute, 1999)
Rosemary Gemmell - Professional freelance writer of published short stories and articles in the UK, US and online. Author of historical romance and ...
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