Rent It Always Rains on Sunday (1947)

Swann's Way of Escape - It Always Rains on Sunday review by CH

Place was always as much a character in Ealing films as those who people them. Less well known than Passport to Pimlico is It Always Rains on Sunday (1947). It certainly does in an East End whose roofs and cobbles gleam as much as those in any of the noirs with which it was a contemporary.

True to such form, it opens with the front page of a newspaper - and the headline about a prison escape. On the run from Dartmoor is Tommy Swann, played by John McCullum who has got back to the city and into the surviving air-raid shelter in the crowded house in which Googie Withers who, in the absence of that lover, is married to the stolid, even portly darts-playing Edward Chapman with whom she’s had a son and taken on his two rather older daughters who are embroiled in matters amatory of their own (Sydney Tafler is excellent as a smoothly philandering bandleader).

Startlingly, Googie Withers suggests Swann hides in the marital bed for a while. Many are the turns, some rather bold, taken as day turns to night; in moving from scene to scene - whether pub, kitchen (tin-tub bath and all) or railway track - the pace is tremendous; that route is lined with many a small part cast to perfection and often with more than a dash of humour. None other than Jack Warner provides another of what would be many outings as a police inspector on the trail.

Anybody familiar with Robert Hamer’s next film Kind Hearts and Coronets should be sure not to overlook this one which, in its different way, is as accomplished, owing much to the cinematographer who worked on both: Douglas Slocombe.

Superb - It Always Rains on Sunday review by sb

FILM & REVIEW It Always Rains on Sundays - terrific Ealing social drama has Withers as Rose married to much older widower George and whose 2 teenage daughters bitterly resent her. We learn that Tommy Swann (McCallum) has escaped from prison and may be heading back to East London and in a flashback he and Rose were engaged and he had one final job to do before they get married - but that gets him 7 years hard Labour. She discovers him hiding in the outhouse and agreed to shelter and feed him for a day before he heads for the docks. Of course with a large family coming and going all day ( there is also a son which may be his) isn’t easy as the net closes led by local copper Jack Warner . What’s brilliant is all the background and subplots that unfold around the main narrative with philandering band leaders, Jewish market traders , 3 hapless crooks who find an empty safe and end up with boxes of roller skates to unload and a full on bustling Sunday market. It’s also got a brilliant finale in a local railway yard as Tommy realises he’s not going to make it . Set in and mainly filmed in Bethnal Green with its post war ruins and rationing its a great snapshot of the time. Withers leads a first class cast and if any film has characters who can described as hanging on in quiet desperation it’s this - 4/5

Atmospheric post-war years - It Always Rains on Sunday review by HL

This black and white film offers an exciting story, but what amazes is the wonderful, atmospheric depiction of a particular time - immediately post-WW2 - and place - the East End of London. There is also a big cast of fascinating characters, with superb leads. The whole thing just pulses with life. I watched it through twice.