'No Such Place as Bethnal Green' - It Always Rains on Sunday

Event information

This series of film screenings and talks takes a look at how London locations, East London and Bethnal Green more specifically, have been represented, re-staged and re-imagined by different film-makers. We will be screening three East End cinema classics in the nave of the beautiful grade 1 listed church St John on Bethnal Green. The screenings will be accompanied by talks by writer Iain Sinclair, Charlotte Brunsdon (author of London in Cinema) and musician and actor Nick Tesco.

It Always Rains on Sunday, directed by Robert Hamer in 1947, is the second film in the series with Googie Withers playing Rose, a cantankerous and seemingly exhausted housewife. The events of one Sunday force her to confront the disappointments of her past and the limitations of her present. This is in many ways a classic piece of British social realist cinema, although this realism has plenty of room for a certain melodramatic sensibility. Set firmly in the social milieu of post-war Bethnal Green, many of the main narrative forces in the film take the form of attempted escape. Those on the lookout for recognisable Bethnal Green locations in this film might notice that the production itself, at least, managed to get away.
Charlotte Brunsdon, Professor of Film and Television Studies at the University of Warwick, will be providing an introduction to this screening. Charlotte is author of the study London in Cinema: the cinematic city since 1945 and is a leading researcher on the capital's cinematic life and history.
milieu of post-war Bethnal Green, many of the main narrative forces in the film take the form of attempted escape. Those on the lookout for recognisable Bethnal Green locations in this film might notice that the production itself, at least, managed to get away.
Charlotte Brunsdon, Professor of Film and Television Studies at the University of Warwick, will be providing an introduction to this screening. Charlotte is author of the study London in Cinema: the cinematic city since 1945 and is a leading researcher on the capital’s cinematic life and history.