It Always Rains on Sunday

Rose and escaped criminal Tommy embrace

There aren’t many straight arrows in the British thriller It Always Rains on Sunday. Most of its characters are schemers or chisellers, people on the make or on the take, they’re liars, crooks or worse. When the film debuted in 1947, the people of Bethnal Green, where it’s set, objected strongly to the way it depicted their community. Unconcerned, the British public went to see it in droves. Later, when it got re-released in the early 2000s, having been given a digital wash and brush-up by the British Film Institute, American critics also raved – “a masterpiece of dead-ends and might-have-beens,” said The Village Voice. “Artful and iconoclastic,” said The New Yorker. It … Read more