New book reappraises the prestige of post-war British film comedy

The ‘eccentric’ comedies that came to prominence during post-war British cinema should be regarded as radical and worthy of more serious critical attention, according to a major new academic book on the period.

Films such as The Lavender Hill Mob, The Belles of St. Trinian’s, and The Stranger Left No Card have variously been dismissed as populist or trivial entertainment, or simply forgotten, in comparison to more critically acclaimed movements that were taking hold in mainland Europe.

But in a new book, released on1 November, a renowned expert on British film and television has argued that many of these movies were radical and subversive in how they portrayed gender, family and the expression of self.

Dr Benedict Morrison, author of Eccentric Laughter: Queer Possibilities in Post-War British Film Comedy, says that even those films now regarded as classics – such as the Ealing Comedies – warrant revision as they reflect some of the subconscious societal issues that would emerge fully in the 1960s.

“There is a view that a lot of post-war cinema in Britain was ‘eccentric’ – or trite,” says Dr Morrison, Lecturer in Literature and Film at the University of Exeter. “That, while other countries such as Italy and France were making ‘proper cinema’, we were messing around with light comedy.

“But I think this eccentricity is rather more radical than has been acknowledged and is at the heart of these films – presenting an alternative way of expressing self, forming kinships and performing gender. And this is particularly important when you consider that so many of the institutions which had seemed permanent and inevitable before the war had been shaken – not least the family and the home.”

Eccentric Laughter: Queer Possibilities in Post-War British Film Comedy explores a number of themes, including eccentricity, queerness (and the concept of ‘domestic drag’ where domestic sets declare their own artificiality and expose familiar heteronormative narratives as myths), and laughter. The book also examines important motifs like ruins, characters doubling up on screen, and wildness.

“In these glorious, subversive, carnivalesque comedies which emerge in Britain after the war we see some of these societal debates – around the family, identity, sexuality – working out,” Dr Morrison says. “And there is something to be celebrated in the way the country chooses to do this. Because while other national cinemas were exploring the struggles that followed the war in very serious and sometimes tragic melodramatic style, such as Italian neo-realism, in Britain, we made playful, irreverent comedies.

“You can take a still from an Italian and a British film, and it’s often difficult to work out which is which –images of children playing on bomb sites, for example, are common in both. In the Italian film, the children might well ultimately die, but in the British film, it is about play and possibility and exploring new ways of imagining individual and national identity.”

The films discussed include accepted classics from the Ealing Comedies, such as Passport to Pimlico (1949) and The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), as well as others from the period including The Green Man (1956) and The Belles of St. Trinian’s (1954). Dr Morrison also looks at the rare films made by women directors, such as Muriel Box’s Simon and Laura (1955), and Wendy Toye’s short film, The Stranger Left No Card (1952), which despite winning the Best Fiction award at Cannes, has been almost entirely forgotten.

“Culturally, we are sometimes very bad at celebrating our film history and there can be a very short-term memory,” Dr Morrison said. “There’s also a view that queer history begins in the 1960s with decriminalisation and Stonewall. But there’s a huge amount going on before then, and these films reflect the way our culture was playing around with these themes of identity.”

Dr Morrison, who is artistic director of the BAFTA-recognised London Comedy Film Festival, began to write the book four years’ ago – around the same time as he launched a module on the subject at Exeter. Much of his research has focused upon textual analysis of the films of the 1950s, along with studying publicity materials from the time and film archives.

“I hope the book can contribute to a reappraisal of these films and this period of British cinema,” Dr Morrison concludes. “British cinema was clearly important during the war, when there was this necessary consensus and political drive, expressed through often very sensitive and thoughtful propaganda. And then in the 1960s you had the New Wave, which took cinema out on location and started to engage with more regionally diverse and working-class narratives. But there are 15 years in the middle that are too often dismissed as a period where we turned out popular material that is ultimately unimportant. I think if you look at it through the prism of queer theory, it offers enormous rewards.”

Eccentric Laughter: Queer Possibilities in Post-War British Film Comedy is being published by SUNY Press.