Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

Great Film overall

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

I watched this film when it was first released at my local cinema in Hackney. It was the first film that I had ever seen which showed an East End which I could recognise as the one I knew. All the characters were recognisable and true to life. One caveat thought, we see the husband having a hipbath in his kitchen (true to life), but I did wonder where all the hot water came from.certainly not from the tap!, Although I grew up in Hackney, within walking distance, all my immediate family came from there and, as I discovered later,many generations earlier too. Very much a Jewish East End too. This sounds like a cliche, but most of my best school friends were Jewish boys (NEVER jewboys which was pejorative ). It was a delight to see it again, I must search around to find a good copy on DVD. I lovely film which took me back seventy years or more to my boyhood.

This is a poor man's London Belongs To Me and although there's nothing much wrong with it the question remains why bother. Norman Collins wrote a superb valentine to London in London Belongs To Me and it was adapted for the screen around the same time as this effort which is unfortunate as this one will always come off worst in direct comparison whereas a larger gap might have been beneficial. Collins' Dulcimer Street was located in South London and the Sandigate's home is in Bethnal Green whilst Ealing, where it was made, is in West London; so much for that. One thing is clear from the opening scene; the only escapism here is in the shape of Tommy Swann who kick-starts the action by escaping from Dartmoor and lights out for Bethnal Green and sanctuary with the faithful (he hopes) Rose (Googie Withers) who has married, since he went down, a colourless husband who treats her well. None of the women in Bethnal Green are having much fun; the elder of Rose's step-daughters, Susan Shaw, a good-time girl manque' is involved with small-time shop-keeper cum musician Sydney Tafler, who is married and only interested in a bit on the side, whilst younger daughter - Patricia Plunkett in her first film - catches the eye of Tafler's spiv brother, John Slater, who offers her a job 'up West' which will probably evaporate once she comes across. The usual suspects are wheeled out, wooden Jimmy Hanley, Alfie Bass, Vida Hope, Hermione Baddely, Frederick Piper and a pre-Dixon Jack Warner as the cop charged with tracking Swann (John McCallum) down. In 1947 it was probably good solid entertainment; shame London Belongs To Me eclipsed it.

This film portrays the post-war East End atmosphere like few other films. Its characters appear to be typical East End characters - the frustrated housewife, adventurous schoolboy, local spiv, small-time gangsters, Jack Warner as the archetypical detective, patrician father-figure - just a few of the memorable characters whose lives intertwine on a bleak, rainy Sunday afternoon in London. There is more to these characters than meets the eye, as the plot unravels.A note on the music: a cheery theme that is repeated throughout the film, as the setting returns to the Sandigates' terraced house, apparently called "Theme without Words": as so often with Ealing films, it adds to the setting a very fitting background.

The film was made and set in the bleak environment of post-war east London and shows Robert Hamer to be an extremely talented and sophisticated film maker. Unlike Dearden and Relph, Hamer does not impose a moral framework on his characters. The film shows two sides of adultery between Googie Withers and the escaped convict and between her daughter and a Jewish shopkeeper. What makes this film stand out is its intentioned 'realism' and complex character portrayals. This little known classic is probably one of Ealing's finest films.