A RUN FOR YOUR MONEY (1949)

With six releases in 1949 (two dramas & four of their signature character comedies, heavy on U.K. flavor & eccentricity*), one film had to be the runt of the litter, and this was it.  A tiresome one-crazy-day farce about two Welsh coal-mining brothers who win a trip to London, £200 and tickets to see their team play a big football match.   Naturally, plans go awry as distractions pile up: missed connections, a lost bowler hat, an alcoholic pal from home with a Celtic Harp in hock, a cute local gal out to fleece the unsophisticated country lads . . . etc.  And if the Ealing creative staff was too talented to completely miss, the situations & even the acting are needlessly gauche even with Charles Frend megging & Douglas Slocombe as D.P.  Is Moira Lister as the confidence trickster supposed to be quite so unsympathetic?  Is Hugh Griffith’s tagalong drunk meant to be so annoying?  Only Alec Guinness, working under his own fast-receding hair, got lucky with the writing.  He has almost nothing to do as a reporter whose subjects go missing.  Finally, near the end, a bit of song (with harp accompaniment) clears up the whole mess.  And since no one sings as naturally as a Welshman, it helps.  But too little, too late.  Even in their prime, Ealing Studios couldn’t bat past 750.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *Two delightful comedies of place & character (PASSPORT TO PIMLICO; WHISKY GALORE) and one toweringly subversive masterpiece (KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS) in a single year, nothing to sneeze at.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/08/passport-to-pimlico-1949.html   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/02/kind-hearts-and-coronets-1949.html