User Reviews

THE MAGNET is an unusual Ealing Studios comedy, seemingly aimed at children but with plenty of satirical elements for the adults. It very much reminded me of a proto Children's Film Foundation movie and, indeed, director Charles Frend would go on to shoot such pictures. James Fox plays a boy who comes into possession of a rare magnet on the beach, before finding himself engaging in various escapades with oddball people. Some elements are predictable - he thinks the police are out to get him when in fact they want to reward him - but there's some local character here from the Liverpudlian kids and some strong talent from cameoing stars like Harold Goodwin, Sam Kydd and Thora Hird. The film moves at a solid pace and, although it's not always successful, it's certainly never dull.

Production manager: L.C. Rudkin. Assistant director: Norman Priggen. Sound supervisor: Stephen Dalby. Sound recording: Len Hammond. Associate producer: Sidney Cole. Producer: Michael Balcon. Ealing Studios, London.

Copyright 23 May 1950 by Ealing Studios, Ltd. Presented by J. Arthur Rank. U.S. release through Universal-International: February 1951. New York opening at the Paris: 26 February 1951. U.K. release through General Film Distributors: October 1950. Australian release: 18 September 1952. 7,100 feet. 79 minutes. Cut by British Empire Films to 6,252 feet (including "General Exhibition" Censorship Certificate) in Australia, in order to release the picture as a 70- minute second feature.

SYNOPSIS: Johnny Brent, kept away from school by scarlet fever quarantine, is playing on the beach when he sees a smaller child with a large, impressive magnet. The other boy is unwilling to swap the magnet, but Johnny tricks him into surrendering it, and is then pursued from the beach by the child's irate nurse. Immediately he begins to feel guilty about his new possession; when he meets a man who has made a demonstration iron lung to raise funds for a real one for a hospital, he gladly gives up the unwanted magnet as a contribution to the fund.

The model-maker touched by this gesture, appeals to the public to emulate the generosity of the child who gave up his most precious possession, and the magnet is repeatedly auctioned, until the money for the iron lung is collected. The mayor, meanwhile, institutes a search for the boy. Johnny, by a couple of chance encounters, is led to believe that the other child is dead, having been infected by him, and that the police are hunting "the boy with the magnet" for murder.

COMMENT: An obvious attempt to repeat the success of "Hue and Cry" (1947), but it lacks the trenchant satire and the novelty of that film. True, the psychiatrist/father gets it in the neck, but this is much like flogging a dead horse. Though we like the coughing mayor, such other mild jokes as there are (the variations on the description of the magnet-giving boy), are muffed by inept direction.

Still, actual location filming is an asset and the players try hard to overcome the thinness of their material — it is basically a one- joke yarn that is rather slow in developing (and not a particularly amusing or credible joke anyway). Fortunately, young master Fox is an engaging youth.

The opening and closing sequences of this film have haunted me all my life with their beauty and power, and are one of the main reasons why I have loved films all my life. The long, complicated adventure in the main body of the film is a good, very worthwhile one, but does not have quite the same legendary status as the beginning and ending.

A young boy cons a younger boy out of a huge magnet, by swapping it for an "invisible clock" that says "tick, tick" in an unmistakably boyish voice when it is held up to the younger boy's ear. The ruse is successful, and the older boy immediately begins feeling guilty, and it is the dramatic portrayal of his guilt that sky-rockets the film to the legendary heights it deserves and the film still remains vivid in my memory even after almost fifty years!

Did the director know just how powerful a film he was making? I wonder! It's the boy's guilt that starts him on his odyssey; he runs away because he thinks he's in serious trouble, and at the end, the boy gets a chance to make it right again. (Here comes a spoiler, so you could stop reading now if you're going to see the film, though I can assure you that knowing the ending of this film will not diminish your enjoyment of it.)

*

At the end of the adventure the boy wins a medal for bravery, and it is the greatest prize that he could ever have, because it signifies a noble achievement, and shows him that he's not a bad boy after all. But he sees the younger boy again, and swaps it for the invisible clock!!! What a great, and thoroughly satisfying film! I saw the film again just recently, on late-night TV, and it has lost none of its power and impact. On a scale of 1 to 10, this film thoroughly deserves a 15!

This film was made the year that I was born. I remember watching it when I was very young; probably around age 6. I mostly remember it because it scared me. There is a young boy in the film who is injured (or sick) and ends up in an "iron lung" machine because he needs help breathing. I'd never seen such a machine, and it was disturbing to me. It was in the early 1950's, and there was a polio epidemic happening in real life.(People with polio often needed these machines to breathe.) I don't remember much else about the film, so this isn't a very good, or useful, "review". I'd simply remembered that it existed, and was amazed to find something about it on this site.

It wasn't actually stepped, but a vicious prank gone bad that left young James Fox films with a guilty conscience and paranoid over every conversation that he hears. He has traded in a magnet for an alleged invisible watch, and gives it away to clear his conscience yet can't escape what he did. They are looking for him to give it back, thinking he's a poor waif, and he ends up on the run across the river in Liverpool, protected by a bunch of tough street kids, while his parents, Stephen Murray and Kay Walsh, search for him. It is very amusing having Fox listen to adults having conversations that have nothing to do with him and getting more guilt-ridden with every adult boys he hears.

Young James Fox, who would go on to great acclaim as an adult actor, is fabulous here, and it's amusing to see the young version the star who would grow up to teach Julie Andrews "The Tapioca" in "Thoroughly Modern Millie". The location footage is fascinating, truly gritty, and showing viewers locations they'll probably never see. The street gang is very funny, their tough talk at first bullying him then helping him out when they find out that he's on the run from the police, so he thinks. Papa Murray, who is a psychiatrist, is hysterical, making assumptions about Fox that aren't anywhere near true. So much to like about this movie, an Ealing comedy that deserves much more classic status and its achievement simply because of the variety of messages that it provides.

A delightful comedy of mistaken identity, misinformation, and chinese whispers. Less farcical than many of Ealing Studios most famous productions, 'The Magnet' is, nevertheless, well worth watching for it's genuine characters and it's insightful take on postwar Britain.

The young boy at the centre of the chaos is guilt-ridden after swindling another young boy into handing over his prized magnet in exchange for an invisible watch. The boy eventually becomes the hero of the film, but is unaware of the fact, instead believing himself to be responsible for the breaking the other boy's heart and causing his untimely death. He goes on the run, and while the adults search for their hero, he does everything to escape them. But the adults are just as confused as the children, falling foul of their own misconstrued ideas and overheard conversations. One of the funniest scenes has Johnny's parents psychoanalysing the child in order to find out his problem, and getting the completely wrong end of the stick. There are allusions to the need for a community, and a common voice throughout. Johnny joins a bunch of rough kids by the docks who accept him and protect him without question despite their obvious differences, and Johnny himself is redeemed when he hands his civic medal back to the child he originally conned, thus overriding his guilt. Maybe a cheat here and there is OK, if the end justifies the means.