It Always Rains on Sunday

“You could say that this is where Eastenders begins.”
– Matthew Sweet, author, ‘Shepperton Babylon’

It Always Rains on Sunday is a dark and dramatic tale set in a bombed-damaged postwar East End London. The third film for Ealing by director Robert Hamer – better known for the later Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), it takes place over one wet Sunday, and centres on the Sandigates – in particular Rose, played by Googie Withers, a housewife caught between her stable but loveless marriage and Tommy, a charismatic lover from her past (played by Withers’ soon-to-be husband, John McCallum.)

Illustrated with thought-provoking extracts from It Always Rains on Sunday in its new, digitally remastered print by the BFI National Archive, this short video puts the film in its postwar context and explores its key moments and characters.

Extracts from It Always Rains on Sunday courtesy of Studiocanal.

BFI Screenonline links

Screenonline is our online encyclopaedia of British film and television, featuring hundreds of hours of film and television clips from the vast collections of the BFI National Archive.

• It Always Rains on Sunday (1947)
• Millions Like Us (1943)
• Robert Hamer
• Douglas Slocombe
• Sidney Tafler
• Googie Withers
• WWII: The Home Front