Cinema
Passport to Pimlico
Henry Cornelius · 1949
Synopsis
The credits end on the words “in memory of”, set over ration tickets. A heatwave in London. In Pimlico, children push an old wheel into the hole left by a bomb from the war, which goes off. A local shopkeeper, Arthur Pemberton, falls into the crater and glimpses gold; he comes back at night with his daughter Shirley, and they find coins, jewels, goblets and a parchment. A historian, Professor Hatton-Jones, authenticates it: it is a charter of Edward IV that gave the place to the Duke of Burgundy.
Context
T. E. B. Clarke's screenplay draws on a wartime event: in 1943, a maternity ward in Ottawa was declared Dutch territory so that the child of an exiled princess would be born on the soil of her country. The supply of the besieged district by air is modelled on the Berlin airlift. The film was not shot in the district it names but in Lambeth, on the other bank, on a bomb site. It appeared in the same year as two other comedies from the same studio, one of which was Kind Hearts and Coronets.
Who it is for
Eighty-four minutes, in English with French subtitles. Post-war rationing is its subject.
Prizes and reception
A comedy released in April 1949, a few weeks after the end of clothes rationing, which its opening credits bury.
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