Dir: Robert Hamer | Cast: Googie Withers, Sydney Taffer, John McCallum | 92mins UK Thriller
It Always Rains On Sunday is a tale of Post War austerity and a noir thriller rolled into one. And Post War austerity is a phrase that’s bandied about liberally when talking about Britain in the late forties. What’s not often mentioned is the positive cameraderie of that generation and the positive energy tinged with poignancy that the era ushered in. And nowhere was that more in evidence than in London’s East End where on one rainy late winter Sunday in Bethnal Green the search for a runaway convict is underway.
Tommy McCallum’s escape rapidly becomes the talk of the town and it’s possible to identify London locations such as Chalk Farm, with its classic tube station, in the chase to bring this criminal to ground. It all transpires that he is in hiding in the garden of his former girlfriend Rose (Googie Withers), seen in flashback as a bubbly blond, who is now married to an older man with three children from his previous marriage. Over the course of a day we see a slice of social history within this chirpy Cockney corner with a gritty edge and sinister underbelly. MT
