Even when it was made Passport to Pimlico attempted to transport the viewer to another world one in which the sun shone constantly and young girls sunbathed on rooftops. The film's very first shot takes us from that rooftop down to real life on the streets still littered with the rubble of homes destroyed in the blitz. It's very much a wish-fulfilment story, aimed squarely at the working classes, who suffered the most during the war, and deliberately invoking the spirit of the blitz (while snubbing its nose at authority figures) at a time when post-war austerity had begun to take some of the shine off military victory.
The film succeeds very well in what it sets out to do, creating a terrific sense of atmosphere and a them-against-us, small-man-against-the system, victory of the underdog scenario that draws the viewer in. The film also follows a quite logical path, with the immediate influx of black-market profiteers infesting the street with their stalls. Of course, today it would be the looters who massed in double-quick time.
The film zips along at a great pace, slowed only by the unnecessary romance between the Duke of Burgundy and Stanley Holloway's daughter, and is filled with peculiarly British moments of humour; the barking dog that wipes the smile from the water diviner's face after his stick has suddenly pointed towards the ground, and one policeman being hotly pursued by another both come to mind. It's just a shame that Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne as a pair of Whitehall mandarins are so shamefully under-used.
If you like Brit comedies from the forties and fifties you won't need introducing to this one but, if you're curious, this film is probably as good a starting point as you could hope to find.
The film succeeds very well in what it sets out to do, creating a terrific sense of atmosphere and a them-against-us, small-man-against-the system, victory of the underdog scenario that draws the viewer in. The film also follows a quite logical path, with the immediate influx of black-market profiteers infesting the street with their stalls. Of course, today it would be the looters who massed in double-quick time.
The film zips along at a great pace, slowed only by the unnecessary romance between the Duke of Burgundy and Stanley Holloway's daughter, and is filled with peculiarly British moments of humour; the barking dog that wipes the smile from the water diviner's face after his stick has suddenly pointed towards the ground, and one policeman being hotly pursued by another both come to mind. It's just a shame that Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne as a pair of Whitehall mandarins are so shamefully under-used.
If you like Brit comedies from the forties and fifties you won't need introducing to this one but, if you're curious, this film is probably as good a starting point as you could hope to find.