The Ealing Comedy holds a fascinating place in British film history and cultural memory. Now, Studio Canal has released one of the studio’s lesser-seen films, Charles Crichton’s The Titfield Thunderbolt (1953), and it’s a perfect example of the simple pleasures of the series and of popular British films of the era. But perhaps more interesting is the film’s depiction of the insidious forces of government and business, a stance that is very illustrative of modern British politics.
The film follows the residents of the fictional village of Titfield and their efforts to keep their railway alive after British Railways has decided to close it, much to the delight of the local omnibus operators. It’s a classic Ealing Comedy story, as their films frequently focused on bands of quirky locals taking initiative against a great bureaucratic authority. This helped define the studio during the post-war era, and its social realist style gelled perfectly with the traditions of British documentary cinema that were so popular at the time.
But The Titfield Thunderbolt was produced after most of Ealing’s better-known films (with the notable exception of The Ladykillers (1955)), and Britain was changing. Post-war austerity was drawing to a close, with rationing ending in 1954. With the economy improving and low unemployment, Britain experienced a consumerist boom, with Churchill’s Conservative government moving the nation towards deregulation of industry and the economy. Within this context, and removed from the modern left-right dichotomy, it’s fascinating that the film’s villains are both opportunistic capitalists and detached government bureaucrats, working together to undermine a less tangible yet fundamentally traditional sense of British values.
Perhaps it makes more sense to see the film, and indeed all Ealing Films, as a response to modernity; a modernity that encompassed the post-war British consensus politics, and the escalating power of industry and commercial enterprise. Naturally, class is a part of this, with the grasping working-class opportunist craving to improve his station, an age-old archetype of British comedy that can be traced at least to Chaucer’s Miller’s Tale. Naturally, it’s a band of familiar archetypes (the village inebriate, the eccentric aristocrat, the exasperated vicar, etc.) that draw uneasily together to overcome their differences and accomplish the impossible. The myth of the Blitz spirit perseveres.
That the fight for the soul of Britain should focus around a train is no surprise. The steam engine has been focal to British national identity for centuries. That the coal-burning engines are actually less environmentally friendly than the omnibus of the time is not a factor here; there’s a sentiment against roads and in favour of trains. In modern Britain, the devotion to cars is often a concern of right-wing reactionary parties who decry efforts to reduce road traffic in favour of public transport. It’s not a statement the filmmakers intended to make, but as Britain struggles through another record-breaking heatwave, positioning the communal train as a quintessentially British icon is a welcome intervention.
Times had also changed cinematically. Whilst films like Whiskey Galore are charming for their use of classic black-and-white photography, The Titfield Thunderbolt is shot in glorious technicolour, which looks wonderful on Studio Canal’s disc. This was the first Ealing comedy to be shot in Technicolour, following the studio’s use of the technology for its 1948 adventure film Saraband for Dead Lovers. The technology, best associated with grandiose epics, brings wonderful, vivid life to the British countryside. Beautifully planned deep shots bring the little village, with its surrounding countryside, mountains, and streams, to life.
The high definition does call attention to some flaws, such as special-effects shots that fall a little short of convincing, specifically involving a model-train crash and some slightly awkward rear-projection shots. This is, naturally, part of the charm of the film, but there’s also plenty about the production to be impressed by. The sequence in which the engine runs out of water, and the villagers must pitch in to fetch water from the nearby river, is a humorous and stunning spectacle. Similarly, the liberation of a backup engine, the titular Thunderbolt, from the local museum is a beautiful realisation of the film’s central premise
More details of the production can be gleaned from the set’s generous set of special features, which see various academics of film and transport history describing the real story behind the film, the production process, and exploring its legacy. Perhaps the most beautiful feature is 16mm reconnaissance footage of the village captured during pre-production narrated by the film’s cinematographer, Douglas Slocombe. Trailers and stills round off an incredible release from Studio Canal that showcases an enduring monument to an anti-authoritarian mindset that remains ever-elusively at the forefront of British national identity, for better and for worse.
Arrives on 4K UHD courtesy of STUDIOCANAL on 15th June
