(1955-59, PG/U/PG, Optimum)
Michael Balcon, the film-maker synonymous with Ealing Studios and its special ethos, produced 95 films for the studio between 1938 and 1959, a good number of them classics. Optimum has brought out the vast majority and these three are part of a mopping-up operation. The Siege of Pinchgut (1959), the last picture under the Ealing banner, is a fairly good thriller directed by former documentarist Harry Watt (who made Night Mail and Ealing's first Australian picture, The Overlanders) and stars American tough guy Aldo Ray as an escaped convict taking over an island in Sydney Harbour and holding the city to ransom.
The Man in the Sky (1957) is a stiff-upper-lip, victory-in-defeat tale starring Jack Hawkins as an aircraft designer desperately trying to save his ailing company.
The best film is The Night My Number Came Up (1955), a tale of the occult in the style of Ealing's Dead of Night...
Michael Balcon, the film-maker synonymous with Ealing Studios and its special ethos, produced 95 films for the studio between 1938 and 1959, a good number of them classics. Optimum has brought out the vast majority and these three are part of a mopping-up operation. The Siege of Pinchgut (1959), the last picture under the Ealing banner, is a fairly good thriller directed by former documentarist Harry Watt (who made Night Mail and Ealing's first Australian picture, The Overlanders) and stars American tough guy Aldo Ray as an escaped convict taking over an island in Sydney Harbour and holding the city to ransom.
The Man in the Sky (1957) is a stiff-upper-lip, victory-in-defeat tale starring Jack Hawkins as an aircraft designer desperately trying to save his ailing company.
The best film is The Night My Number Came Up (1955), a tale of the occult in the style of Ealing's Dead of Night...
- 4/3/2010
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
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