Dark As London Fog: It Always Rains On Sunday

United Kingdom, 1947, 92 Minute Running Time
Genre/Subjects: Archival, Film Noir, Foreign
Language: English

Part of our series Dark As London Fog - Five Greats of British Film Noir
Archival 35mm presentation - Another rainy Sunday in Bethnal Green, in London’s East End — and another dull one for Googie Withers: rapping on the bedroom wall to summon good stepdaughter to start the tea; nagging her decent but dull hubby to fix a broken window; battling with late-night-partying-with-married-man stepdaughter; and then running through the rain to the backyard bomb shelter/tool shed to find... ex-lover John McCallum, fresh from his Dartmoor prison breakout. Hitchcockian suspense, with atmosphere redolent of French poetic realism — but mainly a Brueghelian slice of post-war British life as, amid a raucous street market, a feckless trio of thieves try to unload a truckload of hot roller skates; a Jewish music store owner/sax player chases one “shiksa” too many; a fight fixer drops a thick roll in the youth center collection box; while comfortably pipe-smoking inspector Jack Warner plays Javert throughout a long day— climaxing with an excitingly photographed chase through railroad yards and puffing steam engines, two suicide attempts, and a murder.

DIRECTOR: Robert Hamer
US Distributor: Rialto Pictures