Wonderful little film from post WW2 Britain. After the World War Europe and America were exhausted, It became the era of the "little film". In the US there was "film noir", in Italy "neo realism", France and Britain shared in the movement. Beyond the crime pictures there were the slice of life films that focused on the lives and problems of ordinary people. "It Always Rains on Sunday" combines both themes. There is the criminal element and there is the focus on day to day living in a mixed industrial/ residential neighborhood, the East End of London, reminiscent of neighborhoods in post war New York. It manages to tell a story involving inter related lives. Every character is treated sympathetically but the film is by no means sentimental. Even the ostensible villain, Tony Snow becomes a sympathetic character. Amoral, but ultimately more sinned against than sinning, only at the end do we see the depths of his desperation. We come to understand and empathize with all the characters as we view them trying to deal with problems of existence in a tough unforgiving world. The two leads in particular give wonderful performances. that can be overwhelming. A must see for film lovers.

Stunning film reminiscent of "Brief Encounter." Rain-drenched, with a brilliant panoply of well-observed characters drawn from working class London life, "It Always Rains on Sunday," tells the story of a woman whose marriage to a man she respects but doesn't love is severely tested when an escaped convict, and former lover, asks her to hide him from the police. Loved the noirish use of flashbacks, and the restless movement of the camera from scene to scene and character to character among a cross section of the London lower classes, including petty criminals, shopkeepers, Jewish mobsters and jazz musicians, each in some way interconnected.What Film Noir does best, to me, is to portray the struggles and sufferings of ordinary people with as much dignity and compassion as those of the famous and important. "It Always Rains on Sunday" portrays the heroine's dilemma with enormous feeling, as she glimpses her life as it might have been. Googie Withers and John McCallum are excellent as the former lovers reunited for an all too brief time. The two actors married in real life, a much more felicitous ending than that of the lovers in the story. Not to be missed.

It Always Rains on Sunday (1947), co-written and directed by Robert Hamer, is a film noir movie set in London's working class East End. The film is dated in many ways--London, two years after the end of WW II, is not the London that we know in the 21st Century. We can still see evidence of bomb damage, rationing still applies, and there's a sense of community where everyone knows everyone else's business. Police and petty criminals engage in banter: Joe runs a lunch wagon where criminals tend to meet. A detective sergeant stops at the wagon for information. Joe: We don't cater to the criminal classes. Detective Sergeant Fothergill: Turned over a new leaf?Several plot lines run through the film. An escaped convict--scarred after being flogged with a cat-o-nine-tails--turns up at the home of a woman he once loved, and who loved him. Rose Sandigate, played by the talented and beautiful Googie Withers, has since entered into a practical marriage with a man 15 years older than she is. We enter into her life, along with the lives of her two step-daughters, her son, three petty criminals trying to get rid of stolen roller skates, and some Jewish good guys, bad guys, and not-so-bad guys.The production values aren't great, and the lower class accents sometimes call for subtitles. Nevertheless, the central plot element of an escaped convict, who returns to find that the woman he loves has married while he was in jail, is as compelling now as it was 60 years ago.Finally, the powerful scene of detectives chasing a man through the train yards in the dark, was surely known to Carol Reed when he directed "The Third Man." Reed's scene, set in the sewers of Vienna, took place miles away from Hamer's London. Even so, in compelling action and suspense, they have a great deal in common.

This film is set in the Jewish East End of the 1940's, A part of London that has changed dramatically, It is interesting in a social history sense but for a film it is rather lacking in narrative drive. The characters and performances are interesting but the story has nowhere to go. Women are treated rather badly and called 'bags' and 'mares' and are often portrayed in an unflattering light. It was probably quite shocking at the time. The film abounds with wonderful character actresses such as Hermione Baddeley, Vida Hope and Gladys Henson who are always a pleasure to watch and leads Googie Withers and John McCallum make the most of their roles.