Passport to Pimlico (1948)

Passport to Pimlico is one of the best of the Ealing comedies. Set in Pimlico, London during a summer heatwave. A building site is discovered to have an unexploded bomb underground (the film being made not long after WWII when London was still recovering from its battering by bombs). The bomb goes off accidentally and an Alladin's cave of treasure is found in the crater. The wonderfully batty Molly Reed, played by the equally batty Jane Hylton is the history expert who verifies the loot as belonging to the Earl of Burgundy.

One thing leads to another and Pimlico becomes an autonomous nation called Burgundy. Stanley Holloway who plays Arthur Pembleton - a grocery shopkeeper, becomes Prime Minister.

The script is sharp and typical of Ealing. Seeing the amiable working class of Pimlico taking on the mild buffoonery of Whitehall.

"We always were English and we always will be English - and it is just because we are English that we are sticking up for our rights to be Burgundians"

I wondered about the film location - featuring a raised overground railway in the background (which doesn't exist in Pimlico). The film was actually made in Lambeth, just to the other side of the river from Pimlico. The railway is actually the line between Vauxhall and Waterloo. A sharp eye can spot Hercules Road and Sail Street from the train and see where the film was made.

The film is now out of copyright and available (along with other great movies) as a reasonable quality download from: www.archiveclassicmovies.com.