Hue and Cry is rightly acknowledged as something of a milestone in British cinema – being considered the first of the Ealing Comedies – a pulsating and exuberant piece of filmmaking and one of the most authentic early film portrayals of youthful adventure and comic book fantasy.

Joe (Harry Fowler, Went The Day Well?), a London East End kid, is addicted to a boy’s adventure weekly called The Trump. He begins to suspect that a series of burglaries somehow are related to the weekly storyline, that there are hidden messages in the story that tell gang members the place and time of the next store to be hit. Harry convinces the other boys in the neighborhood and they go to the cops. When the police don’t believe them, they set out on their own to stop the gang and capture the ringleader. Along the way they find themselves embroiled in a burglary in a department store, getting noticed by Jim Nightingale, a tough greengrocer (Jack Warner, The Ladykillers), kidnapping a luscious blond secretary who may know more than she lets on, and trying to deal with Felix H. Wilkinson (Alastair Sim, A Christmas Carol, The Belles of St Trinians), the eccentric writer of the comic book storylines, a man with a distinct dislike for small boys…

Renowned Ealing cinematographer Douglas Slocombe beautifully captures and documents a forgotten Londonwith his evocative black and white photography – the Post War bombed-out city and this gang of adventurous, free-roaming children playing amongst the rubble.