Film Forum

U.K., 1947
Directed by Charles Crichton
Screenplay by T.E.B. Clarke
With Alastair Sim, Frederick Piper, Harry Fowler
Photographed by Douglas Slocombe
First of the “Ealing comedies”
Approx. 82 min. DCP.

Goofy teenager Harry Fowler, fantasizing he's on the track of criminals, finds it all comes true as his boys' comic proves the code bearer for a gang, leading to a swarming climactic battle between kids and crooks on a city bombsite, with the inimitable Alastair Sim as comic book writer turned reluctant detective. First Ealing comedy script by T.E.B. Clarke and the Gaiden Age begins.

Reviews

“Its charm, in these days of headlines about kids and video nasties, is of another world.”
– Time Out

“Remarkable now for the evidence of the pounding London took during the Blitz: the city’s war wounds were still fresh and raw.”
– Andrew Pulver, The Guardian