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The Titfield Thunderbolt [Region 2] Reviews:
A pleasing little English comedy from the middle of the Ealing pack
2007-03-15 - With a little stretching, Ealing Studios traces its origins to a studio set up in London in 1896. An Ealing Studios currently exists and is boasting, even as I write this, of a remake of "The Belles of St. Trinians" to be released later in 2007. To most movie fans, though, Ealing Studios is vaguely remembered as the home of a handful of respectable dramas, such as "Scott of the Antarctic" and "The Ship That Died of Shame." Its fame comes from a series of excellent and intensely British comedies that defined a genre: the Ealing Comedies.

The great days of the Ealing comedies were crammed into little more than a single decade:
"Hue and Cry" (1947)
"Passport to Pimlico" (1949)
"Whisky Galore" [US: "Tight Little Island"] (1949)
"Kind Hearts and Coronets" (1949)
"The Lavender Hill Mob" (1951)
"The Man in the White Suit" (1951)
"The Titfield Thunderbolt" (1953)
"The Maggie" [US: "High and Dry"] (1954)
"The Lady Killers" (1956)
"Barnacle Bill" (1957)

I have a few stirrings of memory relating to the first run of "Kind Hearts and Coronets" in my hometown of San Francisco. I certainly remember a junior high school friend being bowled over by what must have been a revival a few years later. He recited the whole plot, along with stretches of dialogue. When I first saw it a, not so very long after that, I was surprised to find how accurate he'd been.

When "The Lavender Hill Mob" and "The Man in the White Suit" turned up, I saw them at the first-run theaters. "The Man in the White Suit" was the first movie I ever returned to a theater to see again in the same run. The later films were far less prominent, but they all made it into San Francisco and I saw them. Each one of them, however, cut by--oh, say 200 commercial breaks, became a staple of daytime, local television programming, as often as not in the 3:30 to 6:00 PM after-school ghetto.

"The Titfield Thunderbolt" was Ealing's first comedy in color--something that was still a big deal in 1953. It is a mellow little picture, lacking the sharp, go-for-the-jugular wit of the Alec Guinness vehicles, "Kind Hearts and Coronets," "The Lavender Hill Mob," "The Man in the White Suit," "The Lady Killers" and even the lesser "Barnacle Bill." "Thunderbolt's" Ealing peers were the Little-England-oriented, ensemble outings, "Passport to Pimlico" and "Whisky Galore," in which small communities spontaneously come together in the face of some (preposterous) necessity. In "Thunderbolt," semi-rural villagers living not far from London face up to the closing of their branch line rail service by running their own one-train system.

"Thunderbolt" is on nobody's list of great pictures but it is unquestionably a good movie. It had the misfortune to appear at about the same time as "Genevieve," a truly brilliant comedy (also in color) from rival Pinewood Studios. "Genevieve" mines the same veins of nostalgia and good heartedness, but with much tighter script and sharper focus.

If you must choose between the two, go for "Genevieve." Nevertheless, "The Titfield Thunderbolt" is warmly amusing, good to look at and well worth seeing.

DVD Minutia: When I looked at this edition in a friend's collection, it appeared to be a good print in a barebones presentation. Yer pays yer penny an' yer gets yer movie, that's all.

whimsical little comedy
2006-07-16 - This can sometimes be found in ntsc dvd format on ebay. The
movie (in which Hugh Griffith steals many of the scenes) is
about how some of the people of Titfield buy up and run a small
branch railroad line to prevent the intended government
closure. Men from a competing bus line do their best to
sabotage the operation of the branch line, including destroying
the line's only engine at a crucial time--the night before the
government certification on the branch line. The line operators
resort to taking the Titfield Thunderbolt from a museum and
using that engine to get certification for the line. In
reality, the Titfield Thunderbolt is actually the 0-4-2 Lion,
built in 1838--so there are wonderful scenes of this working
antique in beautiful condition chugging along on its 10-mile
(or so) journey down the tracks--no special effects needed here!

The comedy is whimsical, not slapstick, and most of the acting
is excellent. Hugh Griffith (who may be best known for his
role in Tom Jones) plays the engine driver, and from time to
time blasts away with his shotgun from the engine, slams on the
brakes, and trots out to retrieve a rabbit or pheasant. Good
fun all around!