Hinterland

We know Ealing Studios could be political, but their IRA film was a step too far

Although its boss, Michael Balcon, could be a mild autocrat, Ealing Studios took a democratic approach to the content of its films. When most higher-budget British films were about royalty, the nobility, toffs or (at worst) the middle classes, Balcon’s arrival at Ealing in 1938, and the war in 1939, saw the “ordinary” man become central to the studio’s output. Toffs became confined to romantic costume dramas, such as 1948’s Saraband for Dead Lovers (about George I’s wife, and one of the studio’s least successful films), or, the following year, the magnificent Kind Hearts and Coronets, an extravaganza of such decadence and depravity that Balcon, and indeed many viewers, did not understand quite how decadent and depraved it was.

Otherwise, working-class heroes and villains prevailed, enabling Ealing to hold a more accurate mirror to society than before: a shift that coincided with the decline of deference during the war, and culminated in the election in 1945 of a Labour government whose values, and then failures, Ealing also depicted. Although censorship (and good taste) limited the villainy that could be shown and saw Ealing release two films that insisted on the profound distinction between right and wrong – It Always Rains on Sunday (1947) and The Blue Lamp (1950) – a third, more ambiguous film took the studio closer to those boundaries of taste than usual under Balcon’s cautious eye.

Released in 1952 and starring two of the biggest box-office British actors of the time – John Mills and Dirk Bogarde – The Gentle Gunman is about the Irish Republican Army, and more specifically the “S-Plan” campaign (the “S” stood for sabotage) that it ran on the British mainland from early 1939 until mid-1940, to try to force the government to end the partition of Ulster. The film, based on a play of the same name by the Scottish dramatist Roger MacDougall – which had already been shown on BBC Television in 1950 – is laced with moral ambiguity, though the viewer might well question just how likely it was that such feelings would exist in a real terrorist of the type shown in the film.

In the opening scene, Matt Sullivan, played by Bogarde, is seen entering a London Tube station with a suitcase that we soon discern is packed with explosives. He leaves the case on the platform but when he sees a group of children playing around it and investigating it, he has a momentary crisis of conscience. It is short-lived; he does nothing and runs away.

Fortunately, Matt’s older brother, Terry (played by Mills), has followed him, for reasons that soon become obvious. He knows what is in the case, runs down the platform, picks it up, and throws it into the tunnel, where it explodes safely. Terry, himself an IRA operative, has started to question the sense of what the terrorists are doing, and his brother’s decision to risk the children’s lives seems to confirm his judgment. Although the police apprehend Matt as he tries to leave the station, he manages to convince them he had nothing to do with the explosion; but Terry, who has crossed his own moral Rubicon by now, informs the police of the location of the cell’s “safe house” in London. Two of his comrades are captured; Matt, however, escapes, and returns to Ireland.

Terry, though, is now a wanted man – wanted by his former comrades, who intend to execute him for his “treachery”: and they are led by a truly unpleasant fanatic, Shinto, played by Robert Beatty. The Sullivans’ mother also hates the IRA, since her husband and another son have already died after their involvement with the organisation.

Both brothers return to Ireland, where Terry faces what poses as a court-martial, and he is sentenced to death. Here, though, the moral ambiguity seeps in again, providing an ending to the film that many critics at the time found a cop-out. Terry has decided to spring from custody the two men arrested because of his information; he does, and they arrive to thank him just as he is about to be shot. He escapes with his life, and all, it seems, live happily ever after.

The film, shot in stunning locations (in the Republic of Ireland, ironically, and not in the North), has increasingly acquired the status of a historical curiosity. The star performances alone make it worth watching. But the viewer is left wondering whose side Ealing was really on. Where such people were concerned, life could not be happy ever after.