Studying Ealing Studios

Ealing Studios, located in the West London suburb from which it takes its name, is one of the best loved and best known of all British cinema institutions. It has become a brand name representing a particular kind of institutional practice, a community of film-makers working together in a defined location, producing a particular kind of film -- acclaimed and universally loved examples of which include The Lavender Hill Mob, Whisky Galore!, Dead of Night, The Ladykillers and Kind Hearts and Coronets.

In Studying Ealing Studios, Stephanie Muir places Ealing both in the institutional context of British cinema generally and within the social context of a nation adjusting to a devastating conflict (post-World War II), the consequences of its aftermath and the upheavals that followed. The author considers how Ealing films can be considered as reflecting some common characteristics which can be identified as `national', conjuring up images of Britain and Britishness both at home and internationally. In many ways the values of Ealing (personified by the Studio's head of production, Michael Balcon) in the 1940s and early 1950s have subsequently come to be identified with the values of Britain. Seen from its own particular perspective -- described by John Ellis as `liberal rather than radical, progressive rather than revolutionary' -- Ealing can be studied as constructing an image of an entire nation at a particular moment in its history.