All language subtitles for Classic.Movies.The.Story.Of.S04E03.Classic.Movies.Passport.To.Pimlico.1080p.NOW.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-RAWR_track3_[eng]

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One of the great British comedies,

the plot of Passport To Pimlico
is gloriously absurd.

The idea of this film,
not only was relevant at the time,

it has continued and increased.

It's a film that has got
a universal theme to it

that will never,
never go out of date.

I think it's combination
of fantasy and realism,

making something serious
out of their comedy.

And it was kind of smuggling
social commentary into their comedy.

Of course, that existed
before Passport To Pimlico, too,

but a lot of these Ealing comedies

are very, very good
at making you laugh,

and also going, "Actually,
but isn't this ridiculous?

Isn't this something that we should
think about seriously?"

So where do you think it stands

in sort of the pantheon
of British comedy?

Well, I think Passport To Pimlico

is a remarkable film
as a British comedy.

It... There may be,
have been funnier British comedies,

you know, there may have been
more glamorous British comedies.

There's lots of...
But what this is,

is there is no other comedy I think,

that's caught the nature
of Britishness,

the question of Britishness,
the idea,

the everyday struggle
and parallel existences.

The idea that to be British is
to be many, many things

all at the same time,
to contain those multitudes,

and say, "Well, of course, because
I'm British. And Burgundian."

When the good folk of
that London borough unearthed proof

that they are in fact
an outpost of ancient Burgundy,

they spot the chance to escape
the petty fogging rules

of post-war austerity
and declare immediate independence.

Over this way a bit.

Miramont Place. Now come on,
step lively all you aliens.

Belgrave Road?
No, lady, we're going to England.

The irony is that their new identity,

if anything,
makes them more patriotic.

As grocer's wife Betty Warren
defiantly cries,

"It is only because we're English

that we're sticking
out for the right to be Burgundians."

Every day in Britain,
housewives have to queue up

to purchase
even the necessities of life.

For most of us, meat in any form
is a very rare treat.

Each person is permitted to buy
only 23 cents' worth a week,

which is not exactly a banquet.

The political mood
in Britain in 1948/49

was very much one of flux.

People were still hurting
from the war.

Rationing was still in place,

although it was about
to actually to be taken away.

But there was still a sense
that they were in the final stages

of the shadows
of impoverishment from war

and they had yet to think that
they were going to come out of it.

So the situation in 1949 in England

was still very much one of privation

in the years following
the Second World War.

Rationing had actually increased,

which must have been
a pretty bitter pill to swallow

for a lot
of ordinary English people,

given the difficulties
of the wartime period.

You know, they have been triumphant,

but still there was this kind
of slightly colourless existence

of you know, needing to ration sugar

and nylons and lipsticks
and sweets for children

and all these various
important household items.

And so there was
some frustration growing,

I think, with this austerity.

And equally, England was trying to,
in a larger sense,

figure out where it stood
in the post-war world

in terms of diplomatic relations,

whether to be isolationist or to,
you know,

foster a bigger sense
of internationalism.

And so all of these things
are very much in the backdrop

and at play in Passport To Pimlico.

And do you think
the film in particular,

was a response
to the ongoing rationing

and the need for identity cards?

The fact that four years after
the war, things hadn't changed.

Yes, I think that the...
I mean, what was the war fought for?

It was to, you know...
It was a war for freedom

from the kind of petty tyranny

and sort of the oversight of
uniformed masters

who demanded identity papers
and limited what you could do.

And suddenly you find that Britain,
the victor,

was dealing with a situation
where bureaucrats had a say-so

over every part of their lives,
where you had to queue up for food.

Nothing really had changed.

Nothing, no, it didn't feel
like anything had been won.

So I think this idea
that you would be in a situation

where you suddenly felt
the opportunity for liberty,

you suddenly discovered
the potential to be free again,

must have seemed exhilarating
as a concept in plot terms.

Escalating into a stand-off
with supercilious Whitehall,

this is a biting satire
on bureaucracy

and a portrait of a community

refusing to return
to the confines of class.

All the idiosyncrasy, humour,

and bloody-mindedness of the country

are captured in the sense
of liberation let loose in Pimlico.

..one to think of.
This one is me all right.

Think it'll go with my taffeta?

That check skirt I got up west.

Lovely. Three guineas, dear.

Oh.
Make it pounds, I'm easy.

Ta, Edie.
I've got three coupons somewhere.

Four, dear. Same as Bond Street.

Oh, go on, be a pal.

I wanted a Miss Pimlico Night
at the Palais.

Oh, that.
Proper old fiddle, always was.

OK, I'll put it by.

Oh, no. Look, I'll tell you what.

Oh, all right.

I mean, the film is definitely
a response to the post-war austerity

and certainly,
although it's set in 1947,

and, I mean, just a year before
the film was actually being made.

There is this sense that it's a...

It's a kickback
against the austerity,

the deprivation, the...

And also, to a certain extent,
the government.

I mean, the... the idea
that a community of people,

a small community of people,

could actually sort of rise up,

and challenge, actually,
the sort of status quo

as laid down
by the mandarins of Whitehall.

But also, it was a class struggle
to a certain extent,

as shown in the film,

because all of these people are
very ordinary working-class people

who live in supposedly Pimlico,
and they are the ones who -

through this extraordinary
set of circumstances -

find themselves actually able to
challenge Westminster and Whitehall.

Yeah, there is a sense,
especially in 1949,

again, Britain has come
through the war,

and so it does feel like this kind
of great push of solidarity

to not take anything
out of the army's pockets,

to not hurt the war effort.

That feeling has slightly subsided,

and so there's a huge rise
in the black market,

and black marketeering and people
pooling resources together,

and just trying
to get those little extras.

You're on the cusp of the 1950s,
so you're looking at this era

which was going to become
one of huge consumerism,

and much bigger free market
capitalism, certainly in America,

and England would eventually want
to follow suit in many ways.

And so, yeah,
people are a bit fed up,

and they're interested in probably
finding ways to game the system.

Desperately sick
of threadbare existence,

tempers were growing short.

Exasperation flared up
among British housewives

when the world food situation
made new restrictions necessary.

How would you describe
the political climate in Britain

in 1949
when Passport To Pimlico came out?

Well, the British people
were very disillusioned

with their political leaders
at that point.

The following year,
there'd be an election

at which no party would win
a majority,

so the electorate were not impressed

with anyone
who was standing for leadership.

The energy that
the Labour government had inherited

at the end of the Second World War
had not produced the change,

I think, that people had hoped,
in the way that they had hoped.

There were still bomb sites, there
had been austerity and rationing,

people didn't feel that
they were being well looked after.

And at the same time, you'd had
this working-class population

who had been given
enormous responsibility

and control over their own destiny
during the Second World War,

who were now being expected
to return to the status quo,

that there was a feeling
that we're going back

to everything that we'd rejected
and we hadn't wanted.

This was the beginning of the period

where the Australians would offer
the £10 Pom scheme,

where you could go to Australia
for just £10,

and millions of Britons were
preparing to leave the country.

There was just this feeling

that this is not the country
that we fought for.

It-It's a mess.

So there was a lot of doubt,

and, you know, disillusionment,
quite febrile, I would say.

Led by such comic marvels

as Stanley Holloway
and Margaret Rutherford,

Passport To Pimlico is
a deeply passionate film

about what binds society together.

I reckon two pounds will cover this.
Hey! How many in your litter?

You need 40 ration books
for that lot!

Ration books? This is Burgundy.

Burgundy!

Cor! Someone's been saving up
for a rainy day.

Look at all this lot.

Look, there's a coat of arms.

Look at this.
Must be hundreds of years old.

Inspiration came from real life.

A newspaper story
about Princess Juliana of Holland,

who while exiled in Canada
during the war, became pregnant.

This had major repercussions.

According to Dutch law,
if the baby was born on foreign soil,

it was no longer eligible
for the throne.

So an obliging Canadian parliament
passed a decree

that a delivery room in Ottawa
was to be Dutch territory.

In Canada,
Queen Wilhelmina of The Netherlands

sees Princess Juliana
and her granddaughters

for the first time since
the Nazis invaded their homeland.

For the 62-year-old Queen,

the trans-Atlantic crossing
was her first,

and incidentally,
her first time in a plane.

A Queen for more than 50 years,

Wilhelmina ruled an Empire
of 75 million subjects.

Now she lives for the day
the House of Orange will rise again.

There's this slightly nutty story

which almost feels
too ridiculous to be true,

but in fact was true.

That during the Second World War,

a Dutch princess was in Ottawa
in Canada, and was pregnant,

and began to give birth on
the maternity ward there in Canada.

And there was some issue around
the idea of wanting this infant,

this heir to the throne,
to be born on Dutch soil.

It was a very,
very interesting story.

It all worked, it was fine,

it was done through sort
of a bureaucratic sort of system

that gave them temporary leave
to actually call it The Netherlands,

right in the middle of Ottawa.

It was peculiar,
it was a very singular situation.

Under a contract at Ealing Studios,
the writer, TEB Clarke,

known to all as Tibby Clarke,
was a great talent.

He had a gift for what might be
called logical absurdity -

taking a ridiculous concept
and figuring out the logical outcome.

His Oscar-nominated screenplay
for Passport To Pimlico

was a true original.

Indeed, it is a foundational text

for the what-if school
of situational comedy, the sitcom.

This is the skill of the writer,
TEB Clarke, isn't it?

You know,
he described it as logical absurdity.

You take
a frankly ludicrous concept,

a country within a country,
but you follow it logically.

So everything you apply from then on,
you know, is politically sound,

is sort of sound
in terms of character,

that has a kind of basis in reality.

Yes. And by the nature of the
logical series of steps you take,

things become
ever more impossibly absurd,

and ever more, you know, farcical.

So once you... Once people take
an absurd situation at face value

as being 100% serious
and have to react to it,

logically within the rules
of society,

they go further and further
away from the rational and the sane,

and into these kind of
entirely fantastical worlds,

which are referenced by a series

of extremely recognisable
everyday rules.

And that's the beauty
of a particular kind of surrealism,

which British comedy has
played with, you know.

In a sense,
it's slightly Swiftian, you know,

this idea of something
that you recognise,

and something that you can see
where it's connected.

But it has just moved into
this place where it's clearly mad.

And...
But that's what he was able to do,

take this idea of okay, what happens
if we just twist a tiny thing

and then see
how everyone continues to behave.

The plot in detail goes like this.

In the heart of London,

a 15th-century document is discovered
in a bomb site.

This royal decree reveals
that a square mile of Pimlico

belongs to the Duchy of Burgundy.

It dawns on the salt-of-the-earth
locals that as Burgundians,

they are no longer beholden
to the stringent rules

of rationing in 1949.

Now it has always been known

that Miramont House was occupied
by a Burgundian nobleman,

styling himself
the Count Maurice de Charolais.

With the help of this document,
I now intend to prove

that Maurice de Charolais
and the Duke of Burgundy

were one and the same person.

For it is a royal charter,
signed by King Edward IV,

making the Duke
not only a grant of Miramont House,

but decreeing that the entire estate

shall be recognised henceforth
as Burgundian soil.

Now, Edward IV would never have made
such a grant-

One moment, Professor.

Are you implying that this treasure
does not belong to the Crown?

Oh no, it belongs to the people in
the area covered by the old estate,

since this charter specifically
makes them natives of Burgundy.

Do you mean that these Londoners
are technically Burgundians?

Indubitably. This royal charter
has never been repealed.

It is as valid today
as on the day it was signed

by the founder of the House of York.

Blimey. I'm a foreigner.

So Tibby Clarke had been working
at Ealing Studios

as a writer for some time,
and would go on to.

He made over a dozen films
with them.

Not all of them were comedies,
there were some dramas as well.

And he had a real taste for
kind of a combination of absurdity

and a real kind of
governing intellect and logic to it.

He sort of takes
very serious situations

and makes them flippant,
or takes, you know,

the silliness of a situation and
tries to treat it with seriousness.

So there is a really interesting
tonal thing that goes on

in a lot of his writing
for the screen.

With Passport To Pimlico,

he takes that inspiration
from the Dutch monarchy

to new extremes.

TEB Clarke wanted to sort of
spin it out of this original idea

into something
that was very London-based,

very interesting, and actually would
grab the attention of the audience.

And he came up
with this absolutely fabulous idea.

The Duke of Burgundy claimed

that particular part of London
as his own. Obviously, I mean,

he was Charles the Rash,
as he was then known,

and it is something
that has never been rescinded.

Now of course they come up,
they don't know anything about this,

they call in an historian
to sort of verify the document,

the historian played
by Margaret Rutherford

absolutely brilliantly,
totally eccentric,

dotty as anything,
but knows her history.

Goes through the documents
and says, "It's absolutely true."

This area of Pimlico is not London,

it's not Great Britain,
it belongs to Burgundy.

And having established
the facts of this...

...they then decide
as a sort of collective around them,

that if it's Burgundian,

then they are not subject
to the laws

that are applying to the rest
of the British Isles,

especially
they don't have to have rationing,

they don't have to have policing,

they can actually call
their own shots,

and create
their own sort of identity.

When Whitehall resists, the situation
grows more and more bizarre,

as if the whole story is
a fever dream

brought on by the unnatural heat.

You can't throw me
out of my own country.

Don't be absurd, man.

If you seriously think
that an obscure point of the law-

Obscure or not,
legally, this is Burgundy.

Head office no longer has
any jurisdiction over this bank.

This is my bank.

So tell me a bit about
what are the consequences of these...

these Pimlicans suddenly wanting
to be Burgundians,

and how does it affect Britain,
the outside world?

Well, this I think is
where the magic comes in,

because you know, actually,
if you were to be genuinely logical,

there are these places in lots
of countries where there are,

you know, effectively tax shelters
or something like that.

You could have
a very rational response to this.

But what they do is they decide
to build quite a utopian society.

They decide
that they will rule themselves,

and that they will act in
the best interests of the community,

to give themselves the freedoms
that they've been missing.

Looks like a fine weekend.
Yes, sir.

You'll be back.

The unusual thing
about Passport To Pimlico

is that it was
one of the first films

that dealt
with working-class people,

working-class society.
There had been very, very few.

The Stars Look Down,
Carol Reed's film in 1940,

was considered
a working-class piece.

But generally speaking,

if they were films that were dealing
with the working-class,

they were usually crime films.

It Always Rains on a Sunday,
things like that.

But this was not about sort of
working-class gangsters

or criminals,
this was about a real community.

And the films
about the working class of Britain

didn't really come into their own
until the very late '50s

and the early '60s, and that's
when they sort of, they start...

Well, it came in with
the Angry Young Men playwrights.

That's when those kind of films,

that... that was the sea change
in the culture.

So this was pretty unusual,
it was pretty unusual to actually...

for Londoners, especially,

to see themselves
represented on film.

So Clarke's screenplay
actually went on to be nominated

for an Academy award, which is
interesting in 1949 as well,

because I think
Americans were looking,

and Hollywood,
was looking to England,

who was so much closer
to the actual site of war

and understood that the suffering
the English people had been through

was much different
than the American,

in terms of it
actually being in London.

So people were interested,
I think, in seeing depictions

of what was happening there
in that immediate post-war period.

The power of Passport To Pimlico

lies in the contrast
between the flights of fancy

and the humdrum surroundings.

The film teems
with era-specific references.

Beneath the hilarious shenanigans
of grocers, fishmongers,

and a bumbling bobby, who finds
himself a one-man police force,

lies a picture of the growing
disillusionment within British life.

Come to think of it,
I shan't need this any more, either!

That's the stuff! Scrap them all!

Oi, stop it, you idiots!

Mr Wix, you're a responsible man.
Can't you do something?

Certainly.

This is a job for Scotland Yard.

Whitehall one two, one two.

♪ Knees up, knees up
Get those knees up

♪ Knees up, Mother Brown ♪

♪ A world on fire

♪ I just want to start

♪ A little flame in your heart

♪ In my heart

♪ I have but one desire... ♪

The nature of the story called
for a large ensemble.

The film effectively stars
an entire London community

hemmed in by railway lines.

Yet a soap opera of lives

emerges from the quirky precision
of actors such as Barbara Murray

as the grocer's
forward-thinking daughter,

Raymond Huntley
as the down-trodden bank manager,

Carry On's Charles Hawtry
as a local scamp.

And the great Hermione Baddeley
from Brighton Rock

as a crafty dressmaker.

And it had an extraordinary cast
of British talent,

even, you know, even sort of
down to the small roles.

And everybody could sort of
recognise something of themselves

if they were say,
lower middle class,

or even working class, because
there they were on the screen.

It's a really vivid and textured
ensemble cast in this film,

and that kind of very much reflects
the theme of Passport To Pimlico,

which is about individualism
versus community spirit.

So it doesn't completely focus...
You have your protagonists,

but it wasn't completely focused
in on singular characters

who are only concerned
with themselves.

It is very much
about the wider community.

And a lot of those roles were
also filled by musical entertainers,

or-or, you know, popular figures

and character actors
in England at the time.

So these would've been familiar
to the audience as well,

and there's that sense of
familiarity

that tides you through that...
you know,

it gives you a sense of something
when you watch the film.

If there is a protagonist, then it is
Stanley Holloway's Arthur Pemberton,

the grocer who is duly elected
prime minister of Burgundy,

and thrills at the chance
for a little polite anarchy.

Holloway had done Shakespeare
and Dickens,

and would go on to be nominated

for another big-hearted cockney
in My Fair lady.

Few actors represented
the mischievous working-class spirit

better than him.

He really is
the thread through this.

He is the community leader.

We see him at the beginning
arguing for his community.

And he becomes prime minister
of Burgundy, doesn't he?

Yes, yes, and he is the one
who discovers the gold.

So he is very much the sort of,
if you like, the spirit of Burgundy.

But then Margaret Rutherford
plays the historian,

and she is essential
to justify the plot.

If she doesn't arrive
and say all of this is true,

then all it is
is a discovery of a piece of paper.

She has to be the person
who is constantly arriving,

constantly validating when
the Duke of Burgundy does turn up,

she validates this, validates the-

She is just a joy, isn't she?
Yeah.

Good morning, sir,
I hope you'll pardon us for-

I am the culprit.

This is Professor Hatton-Jones
of the London University.

The moment
our good friend told me the news,

I was Arion, I was Zephyrus!

Nothing could detain me
from instant communion

with a living survivor
of the House of Charolais.

The pivotal part of dotty historian
Professor Hatton-Jones

was written for Alastair Sim.

When he dropped out,

Margaret Rutherford stepped into
his place without changing a line.

She was, frankly,
born to play dotty professors.

The diminutive academic is there
for pivotal historical exposition.

The joke is Rutherford's enthusiastic
ramblings are mostly unintelligible.

Forgive me, are you a bleeder?
I beg your pardon?

Do you suffer from haemophilia?

When you cut yourself,
do you bleed interminably?

No, I don't think so.
Oh, pity. It's in the family.

Definitely in the family.
Oh, I am very sorry.

She also talks about sort of,
you know,

very, very obscure moments
in history at high speed.

"Well everyone fought
on the battlefield of so and so...

no, not true at all.

And everyone's
sort of staring at her madly.

"Wait, what do you mean?
Do you mean..."

and off she goes like that.
So she's...

But also what's great about her

is that she's clearly
enormously enthused by the project,

so she keeps turning up. She's...

You know, she's a professor
from miles away, but she can't be...

She can't leave this place alone,
she's like, you know,

effectively, she becomes part of
the community as the film goes on.

Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne

offer the confounded face
of officialdom.

This is knowing casting -
the actors were famous

as the double act
Charters and Caldicott in thrillers

such as The Lady Vanishes
and Night Train To Munich.

They defined a breed of upper-class
befuddlement.

Clutching
incessantly ringing telephones

and nursing tumblers of Alka-Seltzer,

they expend most of their energy

fobbing off the problem
to other departments.

Soap.

Were you issued with this?

No, I pinched it
from the French embassy.

Oh.

This situation though,
it's an absolute deadlock.

Oh, no, not quite.

Now that this Duke has been
officially recognised,

we can at least talk to them. Towel?

Time for talk's passed.

Any more talk and we've had it.
We've got to do something.

We've got to tell this Duke
where he gets off.

Oh. Well, I hope the old man
won't put me onto it.

The main outsiders,
the main Whitehall characters,

the two of them,
played by Basil Radford

and Naunton Wayne.

And these are...
These are a double act.

They would have been very,
very familiar to the audience

from The Lady Vanishes,

which was the first time
that they appeared on film together.

They are basically
a kind of bachelor duo,

who are obsessed,
mutually obsessed, with cricket.

And they...

It doesn't matter what peril
they're in or what adventures

they get up to, or...
The main thing is

that they are talking
about the current cricket scores.

They are sort of... typical English
sort of upper-class types,

who, you know, they're not cowards,
they're not... whatever,

they're-they're just,
their main concern is cricket,

even if the bullets
are whizzing over their heads.

And they became so popular

after their appearance
in Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes,

that they were cast again
in Night Train To Munich,

as a... as a double act,
as Charters and Caldicott,

which is what their names were.

So they became
almost sort of a trademark.

They're not called
Charters and Caldicott in this,

but the very fact that they appear
together as the Whitehall mandarins,

one is the head of one department,
the other is another,

and they are constantly trying
to sort of pass on,

pass the buck as to who is going
to deal with this situation,

because neither of them have ever
had to face it before,

they don't know what to do.

And of course,
they are just as hysterical,

and sort of authoritative.

I mean, they've got the authority.

Everybody who would see them
would know who they are,

and realise that,
"Ah, yes, it's them.

We're in safe hands there.

It may be if the government
isn't in safe hands,

then at least we are
as an audience."

Passport To Pimlico
wasn't actually shot in Pimlico,

but a mile away over the river,

where a cleared bomb site
off the Lambeth Road

offered the perfect setting.

However outlandish, the film
gives us an unparalleled depiction

of a city still bearing
the scars of the Blitz.

With life imitating comedy,

the production became
a local novelty.

As they do in the story,

huge crowds gathered
at the perimeter to gawp.

That's one of the things to say
about Passport To Pimlico,

it is just an extraordinary
social document of 1949.

I can't think of another film that
shows you London quite like this.

No. I mean, I can't think
of another film that shows,

in particular the bomb sites,

without them being
artfully constructed

or put in a very deliberate
and fey way. They...

This is something
that takes the camera out,

and just points it into London,

and then shoots
the film then and there, again,

coming from that... you know,
those European schools of filmmaking

like the Italian
and French sort of realism,

which was just like,
"Well, let's get out of the studio,

let's show what's really going on."

Again, something
that's not common in comedy,

to tell these stories
in the way they ought to be told,

or had not been
until this point common in comedy.

I think this sets up
a whole tradition in British comedy,

which is about the realism
in British comedy.

You know, this is
why it's such an important film,

and why it's so important
that the decision was made

to shoot on location.

Because it sets up
the future direction

of lots of British comedy.

Director Henry Cornelius keeps
his comic entanglements moving

with a series
of wonderfully eccentric motifs.

The increasingly excitable
newspaper headlines,

rival tannoy systems,

customs checks and crowded tubes.

And the Greek chorus
of unkempt schoolboys

always in the thick of things.

There is even a film within a film

as Gaumont British News
recounts the siege of Burgundy.

By the final act,

the situation has risen to a parody
of contemporary Berlin,

with Pimlico blockaded
by the furious authorities.

This week's exclusive camera report

tells of growing tension
on both sides

of Burgundy's
self-imposed iron curtain.

For the first time
since World War II,

Britain's party politics
have been forgotten.

The nation's leaders have come
together to seek a solution

to this unprecedented crisis.

Henry Cornelius had
quite an interesting background.

He was German-Jewish,

he was raised
part of the time in South Africa,

and later in Berlin,
always very interested in the stage.

And then eventually moved to England

and worked on propaganda
and documentary films.

It was there
that he met Alberto Cavalcanti,

who, of course, ended up being
one of the great luminaries

of Ealing Studios as a director.

He also worked a little bit
with Charles Crichton,

another important director
for Ealing.

And so through those connections
that he made,

and through working as a producer,
sometimes a writer,

and mostly an assistant, an
assistant director on various films,

some of which were quite successful,

he eventually got
Michael Balcon's attention.

He worked on the great crime film
It Always Rains On Sunday

in a supporting
kind of role on the set.

So that kind of set him up
to get the chance

to direct his first feature
with Passport To Pimlico.

However, there was
quite a contentious relationship

between him
and the head of the studio.

He was over budget
and over schedule on the film.

Some of that was not his fault.

The film is set
in the summer of 1947,

and a very important part of that
is that there is a huge heatwave,

and there are water shortages
in this little... small...

sort of island unto itself
that is Burgundy,

and it's a huge plot point
in the film.

However, when they filmed it
in the summer of 1948,

it was one of the wettest summers
on record.

So there were just constant delays
and issues around the weather.

The great drought caused
by London's longest heatwave

is the one serious threat
to Burgundy's independence.

80-year-old records for lack
of rainfall have all gone overboard.

Water is cut off,
but liquor makes do.

So Burgundy washes up
in a pint of bitter

and makes tea
with a kettle of boiling gin.

In fact, Burgundians are spending
their water like money.

But he infuriated his boss,
Michael Balcon,

which is kind of the theme
of the film as well,

so it's entirely in keeping.

Yes, I mean the tension
between the authorities

and the people of Burgundy

was enacted between the producer
and the director.

There's a...
This film has a lot of meta moments.

So in the opening titles,

there is a piece of graffiti shown,
which says "Corny is a rotter",

and Corny was Cornelius's nickname,
so Balcon had obviously gone in

and put in a little...
a little comment to Cornelius.

So there was this war.

Some of the younger actors had found

Cornelius's
very stern way of directing

a little intimidating,
and so they found the rows,

the daily rows on set
between Balcon and Cornelius

to be entertaining because
they felt scared of Cornelius.

But yeah, it was daily.

They would daily have
a set-to about what was going on.

As a satire of British bureaucracy,

it is as much a film about language,

how the working-class folk
of Burgundy

begin to adopt the highfalutin
flannel of their foes.

There is a socialist parable
inherent in Clarke's script

about a community of people
who grow increasingly unsure

that they want to relinquish
the stability of the past.

They have the choice

of accepting the government's
evacuation offer,

or of subjecting themselves
and their children

to the hardships
of what would be virtually a siege.

Come along, children.

Cor, look at that!
The Siege Of Burgundy.

Like to see that.

Look at them pictures.

Fuelled by contrasting themes
of individuality and togetherness,

Passport To Pimlico is
the archetypal Ealing comedy.

A community bands together
in good-natured rebellion,

but victory is not
all it's cracked up to be.

The Burgundians are soon faced with
the perils of free-market economics.

For every good intention, there is
a spiv lurking around the corner.

And it's amazing to think that there
was a comedy made in 1949

basically about
free market economics.

It is. Well, it's...

I mean, this is
why I always think of it sometimes

as a libertarian Marxist idea,

because it's about the freedom
of the community

set against the way
the market comes in.

Actually the arrival of
the free market is seen as a threat,

ironically - once the spivs
and the market arrive,

the community is threatened
so they then have to work

on this kind of charitable basis
with the people of Britain.

So there's really...

I mean, it explores
all sorts of ideas with jokes,

which is the wonderful thing
about it is.

The ideas being discussed here
are immense historical ideas

that have been coursing through
European dialogues for 200 years,

and they do them
in two hours with some gags.

Then in 1948,

when the Russians
sealed off the land corridors

leading to Western Berlin,

the United States,
England and France

countered
with the famous Berlin airlift.

From their bases
outside the iron curtain,

a steady stream of airplanes
flew night and day,

supplying West Berlin's
two million residents with food,

fuel and medicine.

Finally, the communists capitulated
and reopened the land corridor.

What Clarke also manages to pull in

into this story is -
and it was very current -

was the Berlin airlift,
the Berlin blockade,

when the Soviets
actually stopped supplies

coming in to parts of Berlin.

And so
the great Berlin airlift started,

and packages would be dropped
from above,

or brought in somehow or other,
to people who were under siege.

He uses this in a brilliant way
in Passport To Pimlico,

where the only thing
that the authorities can do

is actually cut off all supplies,

cut off communication
and cut off trade.

And so they basically put Burgundy
under siege - Pimlico, under siege.

This gives rise
to not only a fantastic scene

where they're running out of water,
and so at night,

they crawl under barbed wire,

and attach a hose and then run it
back into the reservoir,

which is actually a crater,
to fill it up.

That whole scene is like
a scene from a war film.

I mean, it's quite exciting.

Ooh, it's good.

I think Passport To Pimlico
has one foot

very firmly in social realism,

particularly for the time
when again, you know,

I think audiences were
probably primed

to want a little more escapism
from their comedies.

This... you know, is extremely close

to the material circumstances
of real life.

You know, the main character
Pemberton has a daughter

who... you know, as a young woman
coming up in this environment,

and who wants
some of the nicer things, right?

Wants to be able to look nice
and go out.

And so you see these daily struggles

with people who, you know,
could have been...

Back then, certainly,
could have been your neighbour,

could have been
the guy down the road,

could have been the guy,
you know, in the pub.

And so I think that gives
something to the film,

because everything
that's built out of that,

is... might be ridiculous,
but it's grounded in the real.

As the film is being finished,
disaster struck.

The British government
repealed rationing,

and they were rendered
out of date in an instant.

Thus, Cornelius made
the inspired choice

of adding the insert to the end
of the opening titles,

dedicating the film
to the memory of ration cards.

In 1949,
audiences hooted with laughter.

It became a triumphal comedy
of the recent past

and a beckoning future.

There was a hitch because before
the film was actually completed,

rationing came to an end.

Cornelius got around this
unfortunate set of circumstances

by having a dedication.

It said "This film..." on screen.

"This film is dedicated to..."

And then he showed pictures
of the ration cards and the coupons,

which of course is a very,
very funny way

of visualising the idea that,

you know, thank God,
you know, it's all over.

In fact, it wasn't over because
unbeknown to him at the time,

rationing came back
in the early '50s.

But there is no music soundtrack
to that part of the film,

because they had used
all the music throughout the film.

And so they just basically shot
that piece, stuck it on,

and then the film went out.

So it was a very, very last minute
sort of piece of...

"Well, we quickly have
to deal with the truth of..."

Because this is a film
which is being made

as events change all the time,

and that harks back to
its reference to the Berlin blockade

and the Berlin airlift, and directly
deals with the end of rationing.

It's constantly dealing
with what's happening in real time

around the making of it.

This wry take on the contradictions
of Britishness

still resonates today.

Especially
in the complicated relationship

the country has
with its own sense of identity.

In its Mouse That Roared theme,

Passport To Pimlico established
a comic tradition

of plucky social climbers
up against an indomitable system.

It could easily be remade
as a sitcom.

Here, too, are the seeds of
the great British urban soap opera.

The film on release was
very popular.

It was a critical success.

Most of the critics
aimed for the script,

they said this is
a really brilliant script,

but they also praised the direction
and the performances.

Quite rightly.

The film is not only still relevant,

I think it has increased in
relevancy over the last few years.

Because of the nature
of sovereignty,

because of the nature
and the arguments and the debates

that continue... continue with us.

Passport To Pimlico has some
really fun moments in it as well.

I particularly
like the scene of them

trying to take an underground train
through the Burgundy territory

and being stopped
and trying to go through customs.

The idea of taking a tube train
through customs

as if getting on the tube
in and of itself

isn't already enough
of a difficulty...

...is still just, like,
a really entertaining concept.

And it kind of taps into something
which still true about you know,

they call it, like,
the Little England mentality,

which is you know,
just very red tape,

very by the book,
very bureaucratic thing of like,

"Oh, no, we're very sensible,
and you must do this properly."

And I know I'm American, so maybe
I'm not allowed to say that,

but Passport To Pimlico does
poke fun at that attitude

and that-that kind of element
of Englishness.

Would you say the film's themes
were still relevant today?

Yes, I think so.
And I think the film...

I mean, the genius of any idea

is that everyone
is allowed to own it,

whether it be right,
left, up or down,

that's why all
the world is everybody's.

And this film is
everybody's in a way.

So it's used sometimes,
at the time of Brexit it was used,

at the time of lockdown it was used.

The ideas are always part
of the discourse, if you like.

It's this concept of what it is
to be British in Britain

is something
that is still being debated,

and this film is
constantly being referred to

as a point of storytelling
around that.

The lasting strength of the film
lies not in its absurdity,

but in its truth.

Reinforced by a milieu of a city
still getting back to its feet,

and in the heartfelt determination
of this tight-knit community,

there lies a moving tribute
to the spirit

that saw London through the Blitz.

Passport To Pimlico is
a piece of history.

We're back in England!

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