BRITISHneSS

Passport to Pimlico has the distinction of making pouring rain and the onset of cold weather the satisfying and suitably up-beat coda to its story. Somehow the teasingly self-conscious shots of the Mediterranean or Latin American signifies which open the film are indeed proven to be a dupe and a distraction from the reality that is Britain in the late forties. What we see in Passport to Pimlico , however, is a singularly Ealingesque version of reality, informed by Producer Michael Balcon's pursuit of "Britishness" within the unique self-defining parameters of the "British Film." The film becomes a vehicle by which the British may actually experience their fantasies and dreams only to find that they do not sit easily with the much more acceptable and comfortable aspects of merely trusting and enjoying the circumstances they have inherited. Far from being a reactionary and conservative position, this is viewed within the film as progressive because it sustains particular kinds of values and behavior which would be lost to misdirected aspirations unsuitable to a British temperament, defined it seems, by wartime consensus and a nostalgia for imagined communities and significant nationhood.