Passport to Pimlico (1949)
Passport to Pimlico is often seen retrospectively as whimsical, but drafts of earlier versions of the film demonstrate a more sharply political edge.
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This post is part of the ‘Rewound’ series of analyses of objects or episodes from cultural and political history. It is available in full only to paid subscribers.
Spoiler alert: This analysis of the film A Family Affair and its themes reveals plot details for the purpose of enhancing that analysis.
Passport to Pimlico, with its famed scenario of an inner London neighbourhood suddenly finding itself independent from the rest of Britain, is today remembered as a canonical British film. It is also generally regarded as representative of a wider canonical subgenre of ‘Ealing comedies’, made at Ealing Studios during the 1940s and 1950s, with their subtle, situation-centred humour, wryly drawn characters, and whimsical scenarios.
This is a characterisation that some scholars have challenged. Most notably, as I wrote about in this earlier post, the film critic Charles Barr rejected the Ealing comedy category as the best framework for understanding the films included in it. Rather, he split them within two broader tendencies in Ealing’s post-war output: the gentler mainstream, epitomised by the films written by Passport to Pimlico’s scriptwriter, T. E. B. Clarke; and the more acerbic, unsentimental films made by the likes of Scottish-American director Alexander Mackendrick. Barr interpreted Passport as embodying Clarke’s work: a fantasy in which characters respond to harsh post-war realities by retreating into a safer world of remembered wartime unity.1
![London, England British actor and comedian Benny Hill is pictured eating lunch with L-R: Basil Dearden , TEB Clarke , Hill, and Sir Michael Balcon ,... London, England British actor and comedian Benny Hill is pictured eating lunch with L-R: Basil Dearden , TEB Clarke , Hill, and Sir Michael Balcon ,...](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5aba20cd-dc91-4d92-8ed5-b769e083b489_612x511.jpeg)
I want to push back somewhat against both these readings. Having looked through files relating to the film’s production in the British Film Institute’s ‘T. E. B. Clarke collection’, I found a much more zealous edge in Clarke’s early iterations of the story, which were subsequently softened as it was developed into the film itself. In this post, I want to trace the evolution of the film’s ideological inclinations, and their relationship to the broader industrial and socio-political context in which it was made.
Ealing Studios
Film production had taken place at Ealing in West London since the early twentieth century. The current studios were built there in 1931, with Michael Balcon taking over as studio head in 1938, following a difficult spell at MGM’s British subsidiary studio. Under Balcon, Ealing geared towards a sustainable roster of good-quality, commercially viable productions, facilitated by a distribution deal with the Rank Organisation. This enabled the studio to survive for a time amid declining conditions in the British film industry, with the Ealing team continuing to make and release films until 1958 (its studios having been sold to the BBC three years earlier).
Balcon wanted to make films that provided a positive representation of Britain as a bastion of liberal democracy, community, and fairness.2 He fostered a working environment in which talented, in-demand staff sacrificed the higher salaries they could have gained elsewhere for the promise of greater security, opportunities for career development, and the maintenance of their artistic integrity. Film production at Ealing was remarkably collective, with decisions made through ‘round table’ discussions in which all creative staff could contribute ideas to films they were not directly involved in – though Balcon remained the key gatekeeper within this system.3
Under Balcon, Ealing’s wartime films had focused heavily on the representing collective service and sacrifices the conflict entailed, and these conventions remained strong into peacetime. From the late 1940s, Ealing became well known for comedies such as Passport to Pimlico (1949), Whisky Galore! (1949), Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), The Man In The White Suit (1951), and The Ladykillers (1955). Yet Ealing also turned out numerous critically and commercially successful dramas during this period as well, including It Always Rains on Sunday (1947) and The Blue Lamp (1950), made by many of the same creative personnel as who worked on the comedies.
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Passport to Pimlico
Passport is set in the fictional neighbourhood of Miramont Place in Pimlico, in central London. There is an atmosphere of ill-tempered lethargy evident amongst the local populace at the start of the film, with the community having become stagnant, and its members’ lives unfulfilled. When local policeman Ted Spiller (Philip Stainton) goes to inform local shopkeeper and former air raid warden Arthur Pemberton (Stanley Holloway) of the forthcoming detonation of a nearby unexploded bomb, he remarks, ‘It seems funny, Arthur, having to come and tell you about a bomb.’
According to the film’s shooting script, Arthur is ‘the local “character”, and nearly everyone likes and respects him’.4 His current pet project, we learn, is to turn the local bombsite into a communal swimming pool and play area. He runs the shop with his wife, Connie (Betty Warren), described in the shooting script as ‘A country woman [who] finds her escape from the drabness of Pimlico in cultivating pot plants of all kinds’, and young adult daughter, Shirley (Barbara Murray).5
The Pembertons’ neighbours, meanwhile, are frustrated in their daily routines by rationing and bureaucracy, and through pursuing aspirations that seem beyond their reach. Fishmonger’s assistant Molly Reed (Jane Hylton) visits the shop of Edie Randall (Hermione Baddeley) to buy a dress, but is thwarted because she does not have enough coupons to do so. Then Edie is herself irked when PC Spiller informs her that she will have to ‘take a walk’ because of the detonation. She retorts, ‘I suppose they couldn’t make it early closing day…wouldn’t upset trade enough.’
Molly’s and Edie’s dissatisfaction is also a product of their yearning to be something that they are not (in ways that are heavily gendered). The film’s script described Molly as ‘a would be glamorous girl…who is no longer herself’.6 It characterised Edie as ‘a woman in the early forties who makes pathetic attempts to keep abreast of modern styles, but it seems a pity that she tries, for she hasn’t the taste to see that smartness cannot be acquired by a slavish adoption of “What is being worn” without any consideration for the age or figure of the wearer’.7
Similarly, the local bank manager, Mr Wix, is berated early on in Passport by a representative of head office, for an excessive display of autonomy in his handling of his branch. The script said of the incident that ‘Wix dreams of being an important person in the world of finance, but lacks the guts even to put up a show against his own immediate superior when reprimanded, as now, for exceeding his very limited powers’.8
The local council meets to discuss what to do with the bombsite, once the remaining bomb has been destroyed. Most of those at the meeting, including Wix, vote against Arthur’s lido idea. Yet as pompous council leader Mr Bassett (Arthur Howard) draws up the advert to sell the land instead, local children accidentally set the unexploded bomb off. When the adults arrive to make sure the children are unharmed, Arthur accidentally falls into the bomb crater, and before he can be lifted out, thinks he sees some gold coins. He and Shirley re-enter the pit that night and find treasure, along with a manuscript.
At the subsequent inquest, medieval historian Professor Hatton-Jones (Margaret Rutherford) reveals that according to the manuscript, the unearthed treasure and the land around it belonged to Charles the Bold, the last Duke of Burgundy, who secretly resided there after being assumed killed in battle at Nancy in 1477. Miramont Place is therefore Burgundian territory and the treasure belongs to the community in trust.
The significance of the situation dawns upon residents like Wix and Edie, who realise that they can now run their businesses as they see fit, without outside intervention. Yet the downside of this is that black marketeers also rush in to take advantage of the lack of regulation. The government, represented by civil servants Straker (Naunton Wayne) and Gregg (Basil Radford), seal off the enclave. Aided by the arrival of the Duke’s contemporary successor, Sébastien de Charolais (Paul Dupuis), the residents form a privy council – in line with historical Burgundian custom – comprising Arthur, Edie, Ted, and Wix, to govern the territory in the interim.
The government’s heavy-handed, officious manner, and disagreement over what should be done with the treasure, frustrates and alienates the Pimlico-Burgundians. The situation deteriorates, and supplies of water and electricity to Miramont Place are cut off. The residents respond by evacuating their children, and imposing a stricter internal rationing regime, including communal eating.
Determined that the treasure should be used for the rejuvenation of the district rather than simply handed over to the government, a greater sense of purpose and togetherness emerges amongst the new Burgundians. In Wix’s own words, he and Arthur have overcome ‘our early differences, and today in Burgundy we are absolutely unanimous in our resolve to keep our treasure’. Other characters such as Molly likewise find contentment in new official roles in Burgundy’s governance.
When a sortie to turn the water back on accidentally results in their food store being flooded, it seems that the Burgundians will be forced to cede. Yet an impromptu donation of food by sympathetic onlookers spirals into a huge citywide scheme to supply the residents of Miramont Place. Meanwhile the Privy Council progress both with the construction of Arthur’s lido scheme, while negotiating from their stronger position with the British government.
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Eventually Wix comes up with a solution regarding the treasure, which will remain in trust of the residents of Miramont Place, who in turn loan it to the British government. The neighbourhood is finally reintegrated back into Britain on its own terms, symbolising the victory of its values. Passport concludes with a banquet by the lido, at which Ted distributes new ration books, remarking to Connie that ‘I never thought anybody would be pleased to see these things again’. She responds, ‘You never know you’re well off till you aren’t.’
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