From Shorty Blake to Tubby Binns:Dunkirkand the Representation of Working-Class Masculinity in Postwar British Cinema

Abstract

This article asks the question: what went wrong with Dunkirk (1958)? Why isn’t this ambitious film remembered as the pinnacle of Ealing’s achievement and a fitting memorial to an event which has become integral to mythologies of the British nation? The production did not lack resources. Backed by a new joint production arrangement with MGM, the film was closely superintended by Michael Balcon, who confessed in a letter to screenwriter David Divine that he had ‘a passion for the subject’.3 The film enjoyed the full cooperation of Army and Admiralty, and was cast with familiar faces capable themselves of attracting an audience. Yet Dunkirk received only a lukewarm critical reception and has, since its release, attracted the bare minimum of critical attention.4 The reasons for this somewhat bathetic end to an enormous project are manifold. Balcon was obliged to navigate his embryonic film product through a range of pre-production crises including the breakdown of relations with the initial scriptwriter, R. C. Sherriff, the threat of legal action surrounding versions of the story