Passport to Pimlico (1949)

User Rating:

7.3/10   

Director:

Henry Cornelius

Writer:

T.E.B. Clarke (screenplay)

Release Date:

26 October 1949 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy

Tagline:

It's the wittiest comedy in years!

Plot:

Residents of a part of London declare independence, when they discover an old treaty. This leads to the need for a 'Passport to Pimlico'.

Plot Keywords:

London | Burgundy | Bomb | Newsreel | Customs

Awards:

Nominated for Oscar. Another 1 nomination

Cast

Stanley Holloway	...	Arthur Pemberton
Betty Warren	...	Connie Pemberton
Barbara Murray	...	Shirley Pemberton
Paul Dupuis	...	Duke of Burgundy
John Slater	...	Frank Huggins
Jane Hylton	...	Molly Reed
Raymond Huntley	...	Mr. W.P.J. Wix
Philip Stainton	...	P.C. Sid Spiller
Roy Carr	...	Benny Spiller
Sydney Tafler	...	Frederick Albert 'Fred' Cowan
Nancy Gabrielle	...	Mrs. Cowan
Malcolm Knight	...	Monty Cowan
Hermione Baddeley	...	Edie Randall
Roy Gladdish	...	Charlie Randall
Frederick Piper	...	Jim Garland

Runtime:

84 min | USA:70 min (2005 DVD release)

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound System)

Certification:

USA:Approved | Australia:G | Finland:S | UK:U

Filming Locations:

Ealing Studios, Ealing, London, England, UK

Company:

Ealing Studios

Trivia:

The part of Prof. Hatton-Jones was written as a man and was offered to some male performers before it was decided to make the role female, and Margaret Rutherford was cast.

Goofs:

Continuity: Frank Huggins appears with a group of men refilling the reservoir with a hosepipe, while simultaneously refilling his goldfish tank back at the shop.

Quotes:

Straker: Do you think we shall get more than two main dishes?
Gregg: Oh, I hope so. I haven't had a good feed since that last deadlock in Moscow.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in "Just a Minute: (#2.2)" (1994)

Immigration? Parliament? Well...not yet.

A bustling and, it is implied, unscrupulous gaggle of Britons waddles its way into the freshly, sloppily partitioned nation of Burgundy. For the new Burgundians, opportunity knocks on one door, while confusion beats down another. The cacophonous Nazi explosion that created Burgundy (and buried Pimlico) is now rivaled by the vociferous crowd, swarming through the former British district like Bedouins over the dunes of Arabia.

T. E. B. Clarke's screenplay, "Passport to Pimlico," in its superior comedic handling of legal, logistical and practical civil nightmares, is one of best political parodies ever filmed. Like Clarke's later "The Lavender Hill Mob," "Passport" holds its knot to British underpinnings of dignity and grace under pressure; what remains so comedic about both stories, however, is the loss of such maintained hegemony. The direction, by veteran Henry Cornelius ("I Am a Camera," dramatic basis of "Cabaret"), is sure, confident in a way that resembles the careful work of a helmer filming a story of his own, which, in fact, he is (a conceptual collaboration with Clarke). It has been said that the two based their outline of "Passport to Pimlico" on the Canadian government's gift of a provincial `room' to the Netherlands.

"Passport" is a great, funny, touching film, well known to subject historians and critics, worthy of popular re-discovery.