Rent Ealing Studios Rarities Collection (1936 - 1957)
- General info
- Synopsis:
- The Ealing Studios Rarities Collection is a series of dvds featuring different classic films from the Ealing Studios collection, some of which have never been shown since their original theatrical release. The series features classics from the 20s and 30s from the acclaimed and classic studio as the series shows the dynamic storytelling of the studio and the many different themes and stories the studio told over its acclaimed career as part of British cinema history during the start of the 20th century.
- Actors:
- Robert Douglas, Geoffrey Keen, George Baker, Brigitte Horney, William Austin, Hughie Green, Gerald Du Maurier, Seymour Hicks, Adele Dixon, Nancy O'Neil, Nancy Burne, Aileen Marson, Peter Haddon, Jane Barrett, Edmund Breon, Peggy Cummins, Chili Bouchier, Edna Best, Margaret Lockwood, Clifford Evans
- Directors:
- Robert Stevenson, Arnold Ridley, Edward L. Cahn, Basil Dean, Graham Cutts, Robert Wyler, James Flood, Pat Jackson, Sinclair Hill, Edmond T. Grenville, Leslie Norman, Harry Watt, Thorold Dickinson, Basil Dearden, Charles Crichton, Charles Frend, Pen Tennyson, Reginald Denham, Carol Reed, Frank Cadman
- Producers:
- Basil Dean, Monja Danischewsky, Clifford Taylor, Ray Wyndham, Clayton Hutton, Harcourt Templeman, Hugh Perceval, Leslie Norman, Basil Dearden, Michael Truman, Jack Rix, Basil Humphrys, S.C. Balcon, Eric Donaldson, Curtis Bernhardt, Michael Relph, Ludovico Toeplitz, Michael Balcon, Bray Wyndham, Eugène Tucherer
- Voiced By:
- Geoffrey Keen, John Williams
- Writers:
- John Huston, Robert Stevenson, Reginald Purdell, Arnold Ridley, Anthony Kimmins, Basil Dean, Charles Bennett, Monja Danischewsky, Walter Greenwood, Iain MacCormick, James Flood, Gerard Fairlie, Basil Mason, Katherine Strueby, Billie Bristow, Max Catto, Leslie Norman, Harry Watt, Eric Ambler, Donald Bull
- Studio:
- Network
- Genres:
- Classics, Comedy, Documentary, Drama, Music & Musicals, Romance, Thrillers
- Collections:
- 1949: That Ealing Feeling, A Brief History of Motor Racing Films, Getting to Know..., Getting to Know: Sidney James, Introducing a British Film Family, A Brief History of Film..., The Instant Expert's Guide, The Instant Expert's Guide to Basil Dearden, The Instant Expert's Guide to: Charles Crichton, Top 10 Films By Year, Top 10 Films of 1939
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Reviews (1) of Ealing Studios Rarities Collection
Shades of Freedom - Ealing Studios Rarities Collection review by CH
Basil Dearden was known for addressing social themes. In directing such films, he did not allow thesis to swamp the fact that narrative is essentially provided by well-defined characters. One of his best is Frieda (1947). This opens in war-torn Europe, where in a brief stretch of no man's land in a crumbling city, prisoner-of-war, former schoolmaster David Farrer arrives with the German nurse (Mai Zetterling) who has helped him escape. There they are married in a brief moment before leaping a hay-strewn goods-wagon towards freedom.
With which, the scene cuts to a small town somewhere in the South of England, all single-decker 'buses and well-tended verges. The country is still at war, and word has reached his family, which shares a large house, that he is bringing a wife (having failed a few years earlier to win the woman who chose his brother, a fellow since killed in battle).
This is strong stuff, their stiff upper lips a contrast with talk beside the billiard table in the pub – where, to complicate matters, discussion turns around the suitability of one of the family (a steely Flora Robson) to continue as Parliamentary candidate in the next Election.
No need to anticipate here all the turns taken, including the need for a marriage that will enable the couple to share a bed: the first one was in a Protestant church, and has to be re-done to accommodate her Catholicism, a further element in a fraught situation.
Redemption is indeed the theme of this film, for all concerned, and its deus ex machina (if deus is the word) proves something else. What's more, here is a notable fight scene. All too often in such brawls one can hear the splintering of balsa-wood chairs; this appears so much the real thing that one cannot help but grip one's own more comfortable armchair in a 2022 which is proving equally divided.
The best film in this box, but the others are diverting.