Out Of The Clouds

Truffaut once noted that the greatest pleasure of Chaplin’s The Great Dictator was how much it had dated. The same could be said of this obscure Ealing entry, a film so painfully of its time it merits analysis by palaeontologists. Rejecting the anarchic spirit of their earlier films, Ealing here opt for a romantic ensemble drama, which resembles less an Altman opus and more a Carry On film with sentiment in place of sauce. The plot is essentially an excuse to promote the ten-year-old London (now Heathrow) Airport, with director Basil Dearden given the kind of access almost unimaginable today. Made between the war and the beginning of the angry young man period, the film is a strange but fascinating time capsule, in which cockneys sound like RSC luminaries, laddish men are “fantastically gay”, all foreigners dress as stereotypes and Sid James can pass for a New Yorker.