As part of BBC Radio 3's Sound of Cinema, a week of essays written and presented by historian and columnist Simon Heffer on classic British taboo-breaking films which depicted a society changed profoundly by war.
In this first programme Heffer explores the Britain depicted by director Robert Hamer in what he describes as his 'stunning film noir' "It Always Rains on Sunday".
"The period between 1945 and 1955," says Heffer, "was when the British cinema started to grow up. The films reflected a world that existed rather than one self-appointed moral arbiters wished existed. The treatment of class became radically different. Hamer brought a mathematician's precision and a poet's touch to his work. He was the most original directorial talent working in Britain, whatever fans of Michael Powell and David Lean might argue. He combined acute visual sense with a regard for and an understanding of the English language, matched by none of his rivals."
The cinema of the 30s was nakedly and unashamedly escapist in a way that the cinema of the late 40s and early 50s - in an age of lost innocence and social upheaval - simply couldn't be. Taboos it had left untouched could no longer be ignored if film was to remain relevant. Families had broken up because of bereavement and adultery. Subjects considered unsuitable for a cinema audience - marital breakdown , criminality, revenge, failings in the justice system, and disability - suddenly became popular with British screenwriters and studios. Social realism was the order of the day. And in "It Always Rains on Sunday" from 1947, Hamer depicts a gritty world of shrewish housewives, spivs, chancers, petty thugs and avuncular but determined policemen who patrolled the streets of London's tough Bethnal Green district.