IT ALWAYS RAINS ON SUNDAY

Dir. Robert Hamer (92min, UK, 1947)
Narrative

With an atmosphere redolent of pre-war French “poetic realism,” the recently rediscovered and restored It Always Rains on Sunday is a Brueghelian slice of post-war British life. Amid a raucous street market, a feckless trio of thieves try to unload a truckload of hot roller skates. A music store owner chases one shiksa too many. A fight fixer drops a thick roll in the youth center collection box.

 

In the meantime, a comfortably pipe-smoking inspector Jack Warner plays Javert throughout a long day – climaxing with an excitingly photographed chase through railroad yards and puffing steam engines, two suicide attempts and a murder.

Robert Hamer was born in 1911 along with his twin sister Barbara, the son of Owen Dyke Hamer, a bank clerk, and his wife, Annie Grace Brickell. Hamer’s cinematic career began as a clapper boy at London Films in 1934, and by 1938 he was on the editing staff. He worked as an editor on Alfred Hitchcock’s Jamaica Inn (1939) (1939) and worked briefly for the GPO Film Unit.

Hamer first made a name for himself as a director with the The Haunted Mirror segment in the 1945 omnibus film Dead of Night (1945). At Ealing, he directed one of the classic British comedies, Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), in which Alec Guinness played eight roles.

Hamer was nominated for the Golden Lion at the 1949 Venice Film Festival for his work on the film, as he was in 1954 for directing Guinness in The Detective (1954), which was based on G.K. Chesterton’s short stories. Hamer also also directed Guinness in the romantic comedy To Paris with Love (1955) at Rank and thriller The Scapegoat (1959), which was based on the Daphne Du Maurier novel.

“A fascinating noirish look at life in London’s East End.” -The New Yorker