search

It Always Rains on Sunday

Brit Thriller Captures Post-WWII Desperation

It Always Rains on Sunday
An escaped convict tries to hide out at his remarried former lover's house, much to her dismay, in 1947's tragic thriller from Robert Hamer (KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS).
Review by Scott Foundas, The Village Voice

The rain that sheets down in nearly every scene of Robert Hamer's 1947 It Always Rains on Sunday is as much a psychological phenomenon as a meteorological one—a bleak, bone-chilling damp born from the bombed-out dreams and desires of a dozen or so characters during a single 24-hour period in postwar London. Based on a novel by Arthur La Bern, it begins as the story of a former barmaid, Rose Sandigate (Googie Withers), who offers safe haven to her former lover, the escaped felon Tommy Swann (John McCallum). But with that desperate situation as its emotional and narrative core, It Always Rains on Sunday fans out into a sprawling, Altmanesque tapestry of East End life that encompasses the barmaid's comely stepdaughter Vi (Susan Shaw); Vi's occasional lover, Morry (Sydney Tafler); his gangster brother, Lou (John Slater), who has eyes for Vi's sister, Doris (Patricia Plunkett); and the flat-footed detective, Fothergill (Jack Warner), who's close on Swann's trail. Like Hamer himself, all meet with something less than a good end.

Born in 1911, Hamer began his career as a film editor before transitioning to Michael Balcon's Ealing Studios, where he got his first shot at directing on a segment of the 1945 horror anthology Dead of Night; his is the one about the haunted mirror that replays the grisly murder it witnessed. Accursed mirrors of a less supernatural variety would go on to figure prominently in Hamer's work, including in Sunday, where the characters frequently stare into their reflections and remember the bygone days before circumstance forged them into hard, embittered creatures of survival.

Today, if Hamer is remembered at all, it's for the next film he made at Ealing, Kind Hearts and Coronets, with Dennis Price as the ostracized noble who must eliminate eight relatives (all played by Alec Guinness) in order to inherit a dukedom. Even in Hamer's own time, its reputation eclipsed that of his other films ("It's flattering to make a picture which becomes a classic within 10 years; it's not so flattering, however, when people get the impression it's the only picture you've ever made," he remarked in a 1959 interview), and it remains the only one of his features widely available on home video.

Yet if Kind Hearts is an undeniable comic triumph, Hamer was ultimately better served by tragedy. It Always Rains on Sunday is a masterpiece of dead ends and might-have-beens, highly inventive in its use of flashbacks and multiple overlapping narratives, and brilliantly acted by Withers and McCallum. Compacted into a breathless 90 minutes, the entire film exists in a state of high anxiety—not a frame is wasted. Finally, day gives way to night, the despair thickens, and all points converge on a fever-dream train-yard finale of long shadows, deep focus, billowing smoke, and rear projection.

This is clearly the work of a tortured soul. A repressed homosexual and a drunk, Hamer made six more features after Kind Hearts without ever equaling that film's popular success or Sunday's artistic one. By the time of School for Scoundrels (1960)—the last film that bears his name as a director—he was collapsing on the set and suffering from horrific delusions (including one of a mutilated lobster chasing him through the streets of London), and ultimately had to be replaced. Three years later, he was dead at 52. But for bad luck and a penchant for self-destructiveness, Hamer might have been one of the major figures in modern British cinema. As things stand, It Always Rains on Sunday is a major work, badly in need of rediscovery.



It Always Rains on Sunday

Thu October 23, 2008, 7:00 & 9:00, Muenzinger Auditorium

UK, in English, Black and White, 92 min, 1.37 : 1 • official site

recommend

Tickets

10 films for $60 with punch card
$9 general admission. $7 w/UCB student ID, $7 for senior citizens
$1 discount to anyone with a bike helmet
Free on your birthday! CU Cinema Studies students get in free.

Parking

Pay lot 360 (now only $1/hour!), across from the buffalo statue and next to the Duane Physics tower, is closest to Muenzinger. Free parking can be found after 5pm at the meters along Colorado Ave east of Folsom stadium and along University Ave west of Macky.

RTD Bus

Park elsewhere and catch the HOP to campus

International Film Series

(Originally called The University Film Commission)
Established 1941 by James Sandoe.

First Person Cinema

(Originally called The Experimental Cinema Group)
Established 1955 by Carla Selby, Gladney Oakley, Bruce Conner and Stan Brakhage.

C.U. Film Program

(AKA The Rocky Mountain Film Center)
First offered degrees in filmmaking and critical studies in 1989 under the guidance of Virgil Grillo.

Celebrating Stan

Created by Suranjan Ganguly in 2003.

C.U. Department of Cinema Studies & Moving Image Arts

Established 2017 by Chair Ernesto Acevedo-Muñoz.

Thank you, sponsors!
Boulder International Film Festival
Department of Cinema Studies & Moving Image Arts

Looking for a gift for a friend?
Buy a Frequent Patron Punch Card for $60 at any IFS show. With the punch card you can see ten films (a value of $90).

We Want Your Feedback

Cox & Kjølseth
: Filmmaker Alex Cox & Pablo Kjølseth discuss film topics from their own unique perspectives.

Z-briefs
: Pablo and Ana share Zoom-based briefs on what's currently playing at IFS

Search IFS schedules

Index of visiting artists

Mon Apr 1, 2024

Hot Shots! Part Deux

At Muenzinger Auditorium

Sat Apr 20, 2024

Super Mario Bros.

At Muenzinger Auditorium

more on 35mm...