I have recently found myself obsessed with the video game Untitled Goose Game, where one plays a goose that goes around stealing objects from, and generally tormenting everyday people. An element of the game is stealing a harmonica and honking through it, which never stopped amusing me.
1947 UK film It Always Rains on Sunday follows East End several characters in various intertwining relationships. In a moment that immediately reminded me of the game, two kids with new harmonicas are irritating others. There will also be a flower car overturned by a car gone out of control, and that’s the kind of thing the goose would have done, though without the car. But I first thought of the game when Googie Withers goes into the garden shed and is startled to discover an escaped convict hiding in there. No, the game is bereft of prison escapees–there’s just a few sheds in it, as well as hiding from the people who own them.
John McCallum is a fugitive from Dartmoor. He chose that house because he has a history with Withers. In flashback, we see their history, beginning with a flirtation at the pub where she worked, to a planned wedding ruined by his conviction for a breaking and entering.
She puts him up in the house that should be empty for the day, except characters keep returning and almost discovering him. Those people include husband Edward Chapman and his adult daughters from a previous marriage (Susan Shaw and Patricia Plunkett). There is some decent suspense in those moments of near-discovery, such as when he’s hiding behind a door and Plunkett just happens to not look in the right direction.
That should be enough for one movie, except this is but one thread among many. There’s Shaw’s flirtation with a bandleader (Sydney Tafler) who just happens to be married and has a child with Betty Ann Davies. Tafler is also an occasional fence, and he has been asked by local gangster John Slater if he would like to a buy of large quantity of stolen roller skates. And those were the accidental spoils of a warehouse heist committed by Jimmy Hanler, John Carol and Alfie Bass. Detective Jack Warner is investigating that heist while trying to track down McCallum. Oh, and there’s Slater taking an interest in Plunkett and offering her a job, which raises the ire of her boyfriend (David Liney).
That’s a great many characters and storylines for a 90-minute feature, and this film manages to handle them deftly. I was never confused as to what relation each character had to another or what they were up to at any given time.
Although I have never been to London, let alone the East End, the world of the film feels fully realized, using a mix of real locations and realistic sets. The most effective set piece is the bustling Sunday market packed with people so tightly they can barely move, while vendors try to shout over each other. I was especially amused by the guy hawking the last of something, only to next announce the last one after that, and then the last one after that last one, etc.
But the most striking setting is a railyard where the climatic chase occurs. The action takes place around real trains in motion and the shoot looked to be especially dangerous. One moment I can’t believe an actor chose to do has them nearly squeezed between two loose carriages that slam together. That would have been fatal if it went wrong.
The script is sharp, with dialogue that is a bit cleverer than how people talk, and yet it is the way I wish they did. I like how Davies chastises the frugal Tafler when she says she’s going to get some fresh air: “Don’t worry. I’ll try to get it wholesale.” Warner gets in a good line when he can’t get a coffee counter guy to disclose information, on account of there being such a thing as libel: “There’s also such a thing as ham, but not in this sandwich.”
It Always Rains on Sunday was a pleasant surprise. I went into it expecting nothing more than a suspense thriller concerning the pursuit of a convict, and instead discovered a complicated series of interrelated vignettes. It is almost like an early prototype of Short Cuts, but less pretentious and mercifully shorter. It wasn’t as surprising as seeing a goose playing a harmonica, but it was close.
Dir: Robert Hamer
Starring Googie Withers, leading a large ensemble cast
Watched on StudioCanal UK blu-ray (region B)