FM2: British and American Film – Ealing Studios

Objective: To explore the ways in which The Ladykillers can be interpreted as an ‘ironic joke about the condition of post-war Britain’

Think: Imagine you live in 1955, what have you experienced in the past decade? Read each of the accounts of the 1950s, why do they vary so much? How was Britain different 50 years earlier? What elements now threaten the stability of the ‘national character’ of Britain?

The Ladykillers’ director, Alexander McKendrick said: "The fable of The Ladykillers is a comic and ironic joke about the condition of postwar England. After the war, the country was going through a kind of quiet, typically British but nevertheless historically fundamental revolution. Though few people were prepared to face up to it, the great days of the Empire were gone forever. British society was shattered with the same kind of conflicts appearing in many other countries: an impoverished and disillusioned upper class, a brutalised working class, juvenile delinquency among the Mods and Rockers, an influx of foreign and potentially criminal elements, and a collapse of 'intellectual' leadership. All of these threatened the stability of the national character.

Mrs Wilberforce Prof. Marcus Major Courtney Louis Harvey ‘One Round’ Lawson Harry Robinson - the characters How do each of them represent British society in the 1950s?