Far into the Night

1943

Drama / War

5
IMDb Rating 6.6/10 10 298 298

Plot summary

Comedian Tommy Trinder plays it straight in this tribute to the wartime AFS (Auxiliary Fire Service). The dedicated band who kept the fires of London under control during the blitz and fire bombings of WWII.


Uploaded by: FREEMAN
July 24, 2024 at 06:36 PM

Director

Top cast

James Mason as Ted Robbins
William Hartnell as Brookes
Finlay Currie as District Officer MacFarlane
720p.BLU 1080p.BLU
819.35 MB
986*720
English 2.0
NR
24 fps
1 hr 29 min
Seeds 9
1.49 GB
1480*1080
English 2.0
NR
24 fps
1 hr 29 min
Seeds 12

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by Edgar Pole 8 / 10

An excellent record of the courage of fire-fighters during the London "Blitz" in 1940

The film is set in London during the "Blitz" in 1940. The story follows Tommy Trinder's character from his enrolment in the Auxiliary Fire Service, through his training and eventual fire-fighting duties during air raids. The style of the film now appears very dated but is a fascinating snapshot of the period. Trinder's acting is a little wooden, the special effects are crude but it provides an excellent historical record of the courage and high esteem in which London's fire-fighters were held and the tasks they faced during the period.

Reviewed by Igenlode Wordsmith 7 / 10

Down with the pumps!

This must be the only time that Tommy Trinder -- or any other performer, surely? -- got lead billing in a vehicle written for him in his comic capacity, only to end up unexpectedly killed off before the finish of the film...

That said, the lead billing of Trinder is misleading: in actual fact "The Bells Go Down" is very much an ensemble piece with principal narrative strands centred around James Mason and Philip Friend, plus the standard theme of the welding together of a disparate team. Tommy Trinder's role in the film is that of intermittent comic relief, which unfortunately tends to jar more and more as the subject matter becomes more serious.

At the beginning, with its light-hearted tone, his breezy persona fits seamlessly into the action and is often very funny; but as the characters are launched into the East End Blitz with, for example, Bob faced with an order to destroy his own home to save the warehouses opposite for the war effort, the character of Tommy acquires no extra depth and is in consequence sidelined to the occasional chirpy interlude. It is perhaps symptomatic that the whole 'Short Head' plot strand rather fizzles out, the greyhound's importance totally overwhelmed in the minds of both characters and audience by the intervening nights of battle against the flames.

The result is that Tommy Turk's death comes as a shock, but not quite of the nature intended: the narrative to date simply hasn't telegraphed the character as being that important. Certainly his actions are not inconsistent with the character established, and Trinder plays the scene well. (He was apparently so proud of this performance that he kept blatantly plugging it in his stage act, leading one heckler to retort that he'd rather watch the comedian 'die' on stage at the Palladium!) But the film then suddenly swings into po-faced, full blown 'fallen hero' mode -- better perhaps to have handled it via the shocked reactions of the survivors outside the building at the time? -- and actually managed to leave me confused for some minutes as to what in fact had just happened. It scarcely seems an apt memorial to a character who spends most of the film cheerfully sneaking a surreptitious fag, and rather unbalances the picture just at the ending.

William Hartnell, here billed as 'Billy Hartnell', provides, as so often, convincing and capable support as Brookes, the intellectual (and presumably left-winger) of the brigade, who has seen the horrors of the Spanish Civil War. Mervyn Johns, as the petty crook Sam, has a similar comic-relief role to Trinder's but is integrated better into the team, while Richard George as his nemesis, the Irish P.C. O'Brien, is inevitably somewhat one-dimensional, but the two have a good scene together at the height of the Blitz which is nicely understated and effective. Muriel George outshines both the younger women as Ted's formidable mother.

The special effects for the numerous fire scenes are seamless and very realistic (or perhaps they really did put the sets alight!) and an extensive selection of Fire Service equipment was clearly made available to the studio. The film starts off in classic Ealing style as a snapshot of a community, and remains both sure-footed in comedy territory and quietly powerful in certain more serious scenes. But one suspects that more concern was paid to the drawing-power of Tommy Trinder's name than to how his talents would be fitted into the film, and it suffers from what I felt was a badly handled and somewhat glib conclusion.

Reviewed by bkoganbing 6 / 10

Those unsung heroes in the London Fire Department

Until 9/11 happened this was a story that could never be an American story. The Bells Go Down is the story of an auxiliary fire fighter unit in London's East End and stars British music hall comedian Tommy Trinder as one of the volunteers.

As the United Kingdom was under attack I'm sure one of the few exemptions in the British Armed Services was being a firefighter. The regular London Fire Department was working 24/7 as soon as the Battle of Britain started and they needed all the help they could get. Hence these Auxiliary Fire Units headed and trained by Finlay Currie and James Mason whom I was surprised to see in a supporting role as his career was on the ascent at this time.

Mason himself said that this was his one and only appearance in an Ealing Studio film and one which he was proud to make as he admired the comedies that studio turned out post war, especially those with Alec Guinness.

Trinder whose work I was unfamiliar with until seeing this is a bit of a lunkhead when he starts but certainly proves to have the right stuff. In many ways this film is similar to the wartime British movie The Way Ahead where some rather unmilitary type civilians trained by David Niven and William Hartnell into fighting British troops.

Hartnell is in this film too, but not as a trainer. He has a very nice part as a veteran of the International Brigade who has experienced the Spanish Civil War and saw the air raids on Madrid. He steadies the group from the inside with his knowledge of how serious this work is.

And this film is yet another salute to the people of Great Britain who pulled together in their finest hour. More than Trinder, the whole lot of them had the right stuff.

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